It proves really complicated to get Anesa and Gill into my blog. This blog’s too private, and if I go via blogger.com that becomes too public.
I could pay for web hosting and host it myself, but that seems like a lot of money to do something that should be fairly simple.
Wonder if we could interest the OU in setting up a research blog site?
9.11.05 Anesa commented
Hi Rebecca … got in and read your entries so far … at least you have research question!!! Lot more than what I have at the moment :).
10.11.05 Gill commented
It did seem complicated, however in retrospect, we’ve achieved it in only 24 hours, and we weren’t trying for all of that time. I spent some time investigating a variety of PhP bulletin board type applications that I could host on my own website, but came to the conclusion that they were all too complicated for our needs.
10.6.05 Gill commented
I’ve just read Anesa’s comment (and marvelled at the fact that she can use her own name as a Screen Name whereas I’m obliged to go for some whacky pseudonym because there are a million other Gill Clough’s). And I thought I was unique.
I now realise that this is Rebecca’s own research blog, but reading Anesa’s comment about not having a firm research question resounded with me. Bearing in mind the success of these web-based forums that I’ve been researching in my investigations into informal learning using mobile devices, I suspect that a group blog would be helpful to us in a similar way. We could use it for bouncing ideas, for requests for help (like “How do I submit an expenses form” or “Anybody remember how to purchase non-elective software”). We would then have a written record that we could check back on.
I’m going to try to create a group blog for the three of us using this AOL messaging system. It might provide some interesting material for analysis. We could even present it somewhere – a group PhD blog from people doing dissimilar subjects must be of interest.
In the end, I simply signed myself up with AOL’s AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) to obtain what they call a “Screen name” and Rebecca added me to this blog. Anesa already had an online ID that was acceptable to AOL. Had I done that at the start, we’d have all been online within an hour.
Now…..what to do with our group blog …
Hmmmmm.