sigh
At 09.18 -0500 99-07-16, nate wrote:
>http://cite.ped.gu.se/Eklanda/Papers/ISCRAT/CoCoMu.html
>
>Note: Having trouble viewing page
But... to write something less hung up on the recalcitrant technology:
>One could study externalization in
>that we study the various subjects who are participating in specific
>discussion, thread, or activity.
>This would seem to assume that the only
>transformation going on were those 'actively' participating in the
>discussion.
=2E..well: you know, I know, we-all know that it is perfectly possible to
learn quite a lot (in more or less transformatory ways, I guess) from these
discussions, without CONTRIBUTING -- but... I wouldn't say that one would
learn a lot without participating ACTIVELY. Which is why I try to be
consistent about how I use these words. Participating on a mailinglist,
would for me, mean no more than being on the subscriber list, one in the
collective (and there's a whole world of different ways ov pariticipating
ACTIVELY or less so), while plonking a message into the list space would be
what I call contributing.
Contributing provides great opportunities for transformation -- not just
the risk of being "flattened" but also the chances to spin out something
more coherent and well reasoned than in one's last attempt, and the chances
for the unexpected and stimulating encounters.
Of course, one may also contribute stuff that is valuable, but not exactly
much of a transformatory experience for the contributor: like providing
that reference somebody asked for, etc.
I'm convinced, from my own experience if nothing else, that mailinglist
dialogue (multilogue) may offer the ACTIVE reader interesting opportunities
for learning (again more or less transformatory, depending both on what
kind of multilogue emerges and where the reader comes into it from. Of
course, mailinglists may also provide rich opportunities for irritation and
for being sick-and-tired... or just the over-rich abundance of mail that
makes the path of deleting-without-reading so attractive. Well, there'll be
many ways of being a very IN-active reader from a learning or participation
point of view. But who participates in which way will not be visible in
public until, possibly, we DO contribute.
Well, perhaps the challenges are more analogue with the private-public
challenges for us when we wish to pronounce on the learning/ /development
of individuals in ANY context than I thought when I started writing this.
cheers
Eva