Well, the panic is over. I didn’t figure out Minecraft but I did manage to download it and set it up on my iPad. I’m keeping my mind open as to the learnings I will gain from it but for now I think I’ll just park it and focus on the course content that interests me.
Week 1 of IDEL was appropriately titled ‘Constructing Community’ and as expected there was lots of discussion in the forums about the short stories presented and the questions that followed.
One of this week’s stories focused on the topic of lurking and an interesting discussion ensued. I put my thoughts together for my course blog and present an extract of the content here.
A lurker and proud of it!
I love to read and I read a lot more than I write. Trying to correct that with my blog and (hopefully) research papers down the road. I’m an eternal student and I love to learn. Contributing to online discussion forums hasn’t been my thing (I select ‘like’ buttons on Twitter, LinkedIn and WordPress) but I don’t contribute outside of that. Why? Well, I figure that it’s my learning journey (note the ‘my’ in the sentence) and not anyone else’s. So if I’m not keen on getting involved in a discussion then I don’t feel the need to.
If I’m truthful, I would be concerned at getting criticism (will have to get over that or I’ll never make the grade of social researcher!) and for now my rationale is that my research interests are fairly broad and I don’t consider myself well enough informed to make a meaningful contribution (by which I mean based on something more than my opinion). I even see in the words that my cohort peers use in discussion forums that many are far more experienced than me in the world of social media but I know any contribution I make won’t go unheard. And of course, (tutor name) is moderating so I’m in safe hands.
The discussions ended with self-declaration from more lurkers other than myself and concluded that lurking shouldn’t be considered a bad thing – more to follow on this topic I have no doubt!
Sandra Flynn 