Horses for Courses - what about blogs?

I’m interested to find out more about the different reasons blogs are being established. Of course you all know from my posting below, that establishing this blog and gaining a presence is presenting quite a challenge. Some very wise and experienced bloggers have suggested that it would take me at least 6 months to gain a presence, and during this 6 months I need to do lots of reading and lots of posting to other blogs so that people out there start to know who I am and will come to my blog to ‘hear’ what I am saying or in the Web 2.0 way, RSS my blog to know when I am saying something. Gee, that takes some time and I am not sure that I really want that sort of presence. I want to have a life so in between reading, posting to other blogs, posting to mine, I need to fit in my work, my family, my garden (which is my passion these days), my friends, etc etc. (not all in that order either).

So, what am I trying to do with this blog you might well ask! I don’t see this as my blog. I see it as the Social Software Research Team’s blog – there will be other posters (you can see the names on the side bar). We set up this blog to share some of our findings, our insights, our questions, our thoughts as we travel the research road, with the hope that someone out there will read them and link to their blogs/wikis/whatever with their thoughts. Have we chosen the right tool? Is it possible to establish the presence we need in a short timeframe – the life of this project is only 10 weeks?

Choosing the right tool to do the job is really important. It is often said that different technologies are used because they are new and everyone thinks they should be using them. Perhaps we have done the same.

What about using social software, viz blogs, wikis, social bookmarking and virtual conferencing in the VTE teaching and learning environment? How are they being used now? How could they be used better? Which disciplines do they suit best? Should they be used at all?

And what about using the same software for capability development within and across organizations – are they the right tools? How are they being used now? How could they be used better?

Any thoughts anyone?