Posted 8:17 PM by George Siemens
Several weeks ago, I sent out an email to staff at Red River College asking if there was any interest in forming a "grassroots" group to encourage knowledge sharing (knowledge management)...fairly good response (about 40 instructors responded). Based on this response, we formed a steering committee to create a strategy. Here's what we decided:

• Give any interested instructor a blog (currently installing Movabletype on IIS 5.0 - causing much grief...but almost there)
  
• Get people to use aggregators (like Aggie or Amphetadesk)
  
• Create a website with basic content management functions - currently playing with Plone ...looks positive. A colleague, Fred Petrash has been working with SharePoint - also looks very promising.
  
• Send out a monthly email to all staff summarizing activities around the college
  
• Set up a listserv to allow for questioning/dialoguing (looking at Mojo Mail)
  
• Hold monthly face-to-face sessions to facilitate discussion/networking
  

The goal is to start sharing...and have the results speak for themselves - i.e. rather than selling the concept, promote the value experienced. The first issue is social - not technological - which is why a "storytelling" medium like blogging is the center of the process. A small core of 3 - 4 committed bloggers is all that is needed to start opening doors of conversation.

Posted 5:00 AM by George Siemens
From Weblog to Moblog
Quote: "Weblogs evolved as eager Web writers merged personal journals with amateur journalism, liberally sprinkled with links to other like-minded sites. So what might happen when these eager webloggers take their mobile devices into the field, and work on some mobile weblogs? We’re likely to see something that doesn’t look like any weblog that yet exists. "
Comment: Blogs are a glimpse of what education will look like eventually (hopefully!). Previously, the teacher lectured and students listened...evaluation was based on student's ability to "tell-back" to the teacher what they had been lectured about. With the exception of evaluation, this process is much like traditional journalism - the paper/magazine tells readers how things are...and that's it - no forum for dialogue that allows readers to interact with the author, content and each other. Blogs are changing this aspect of journalism...now fringe voices and opinions are heard. The content expert (article author) is no longer central to the dialogue - he/she can initiate it, but the readers can interact and voice opinions...just like education should be...