Activity 8 is another ways of making visible some of processes that are helping our community to develop. We've asked you each to conduct an interview with one other person and to record and share the outcome of that interview. (Here are the instructions for Activity 8).
I've had a go at this myself and below is the agreed record of a conversation with Frances Bell as an example. This is just one way of collecting and writing up a story – please don’t feel limited to doing it this way.
Frances Bell’s story
Frances has enjoyed watching the Emerge site grow from an initially empty site to achieving a critical mass of contributors.
The most effective part for her has been the blog posts which roll on and off the front page quite quickly. She especially values the posts which are made directly to the Emerge group rather than those which are fed in from another blog. Reading blog posts has helped her to make contact with people she hasn’t met, as well as following the activities of those she knows already.
Frances likes the way the Emerge network is developing a variety of ways for the members to communicate, especially the wall and the podcasts.
When asked to identify a particular instance, Frances related an exchange she had started about blended learning (link here). Frances had made a deliberately provocative posting and was pleased with the prompt and detailed responses received. What made this a moment of best practice for her was that a slightly edgy exchange developed into better understanding. Through the comments, she and George explored their commonalities and differences, and he showed her how to insert a picture from an outside document into messages.
Finally, we talked about what Emerge might become and how we might get there. For Frances, the purpose of joining the community was to find other people to work with. To achieve this, it helps to be visible and you have to think about how to present yourself. We also need to be open with each other and share our ideas – and that is harder to do. Frances suggested that ideally Emerge should prompt discussions of what is happening here and what incentives we might need to encourage more open sharing.
