I came across the African mentoring project set up by Ore Somolu from Nigeria. She is inspired by the Young Caucasus Women project in which I was the first mentor, and which seems to move quite well at a good pace. Each week another mentor is invited to blog about a specific topic, and the Caucasus students participating are invited to blog about the same topic, and comment to and fro on each other's blogs. Ore has asked Katy Pearce, the project initiator how she got the project started. Interestingly, the project cost is nothing.
I remembered Beth Kanter had pointed to a wiki from global voices on what makes a successful local blogosphere?, reflecting on the fact that countries like Cambodja, Iran and Jordan have a dynamic blogosphere, while others don't.
Ory from Kenya suggests for instance:
- support new bloggers by linking to them, commenting on new blogs. this is important to helping to build a blogosphere
- create a home like a weblog ring, create a space for the community to be gathered
- set up guides and instructions on how to blog
- virtual communication amongst the bloggers (IM, chat, email, etc) helps to create community and forge relationships)
The wiki seemed totally ruined, but I could refer to an older version to get the information still. Mmm. That could be the downside for doing such things in (public) wikis.
In my blog I share about learning design with technology, blended learning & knowmad learning. I started with a focus on communities of practice. I share personal experiences, articles and cases.
I just clicked on the wiki from Global Voice, skimmed along just to have a feel of what the wiki is about. Interestingly, language came up again.
ReplyDeleteLanguage is my pet topic for quite many year. And language to me is the greatest divivde between people. Even if one is speaking the same language, the kind of environment one grew up would dictate our presentation of the language, and our interpretation of the language presented to us.
One of the major reasons why I commented on blogs is not because I want to show-off how much I know nor how good I can write, truely is to show the blogger/writter his/her blog is being read and appreciated. We all need encouragement. Blogging is a tedious and lonely affair. It is in a way like hitting 'air' but not sure where 'air' is. Therefore do not be stingy to give some words of encouragement to blogs that you enjoy reading.
In turn, bloggers have to be careful to make sure they monitor and response to messages posted on their blogs. This I think are some key skill of online facilitation: keeping the conversation going, finding out what the others are thinking, 'listen' to those unspoken words, making the readers (audience) feel welcome and want to stay ...
Hello Joitske:
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately the GVO wiki is subject to vandalism -- but a few of us patrol and turn it back ... annoying isn't it?
Thanks for pointing out ORE's project.
Thanks Cindy, it is nice to receive comments indeed, for a blogger. On the other hand, I never know where to respond, HERE, by e-mail or in a new post. Somehow blogs are not very conversational.
ReplyDelete