Digital Learning and Choosing Your Learning Communities

Our April theme of Digital Learning has illustrated something quite clearly for me:

Whatever Digital Learning we choose will also determine the conversations we have with our globally scattered friends and neighbors, and how we have them.

Conversely, you may choose a virtual community (like this one, our Ho‘ohana Community on JJL) or a social media network first (such as Twitter or LinkedIn). However in making that choice, you will have to learn whatever it takes to communicate with everyone there if you are to fully engage with them (and they with you) in the best possible way.

Pure and simple: We choose how and if we engage

What is that “best possible way?” Well, “best” is pretty relative to each of us individually, and there’s the rub: Best for you may not be perceived as best for the rest of the community.

And there is another truism which frequently emerges: What happens more times than not, is that whatever is easiest for you isn’t necessarily deemed best for everyone else too: Getting to what is optimal for both of you takes some work. Sometimes, it even means building new habits. At some point, people make decisions about what is good enough and they give up on the pursuit of optimal.

That’s life. We all have to arrive at our own reasonable balance.

Marketing guru Seth Godin became an example of this recently when he received some criticism for his decision to write about Twitter. Just one problem: He doesn’t use it. What he wrote was positive, but as someone who is not engaged with the Twitter community he lost some of his credibility with those who are, and feel they are more devoted and fully engaged.

As a Twitter newbie myself, about a week short of a full month’s engagement, I have learned much about the cultural norms there, and feel like I am learning how to speak a completely brand new language, just 140 characters at a time. When do I choose updates that are publicly broadcast, @directed, @included or direct-messaged? Which is the best way to reply to each? Why can’t I get just one stretched picture on my profile page versus the tiled one like others can? When does link-sharing deteriorate to anything less than sincerely appreciated or loved by your followers? When are you perceived as gregarious and generous versus strictly self-promoting and spammy?

And most of all: Why bother learning?

Twitter has taught me an awful lot this month, and I have come to realize that it does take time to learn enough to make a reasonably intelligent stab at answering that “Why bother?” question. It takes time, transparency, and vulnerability: While you are learning you have to engage; there really isn’t any other way.

Further, the community sets the rules of engagement, not you.

When you choose some kind of digital learning you are often choosing a community too, and you are rarely learning alone.

Even when you use something like Del.icio.us, normally entered into strictly for individual book-marking, it turns out to have some kind of social component to it. After I had been using my Del.icio.us toolbar bookmarklet for all my link tagging over quite an extended amount of time, I remember being so surprised the day I went back into my account again to learn how to bundle my tags, and discovered that I actually had a network and fans there –how had that happened? Who were they? Where did they come from? Was I expected to communicate back with them or reciprocate in some way? I went into this mini panic worrying about how unintentionally rude I may have appeared until I learned more about the way that networking happened there.

With Twitter, I am conversing regularly (that is, “tweeting”) with people across the globe who seem to have no interest in anything else I write over and above those 140-character updates. In the beginning, it floored me that those tweets were enough value for my new twitter-friends, jumping into conversations with me just as easily as my older friends established elsewhere did. They click my blog link at my bio to quickly check me out, but even if they choose to follow me (adding me to their chosen Twitter village) they may never read one of my blog posts again (much less my book and about my mission), and have no interest whatsoever in an RSS or email subscription. Twitter is an instant community of sharing humanity in real time, not in experience-driven stories or bloggy thesis presentation. Your Twitter connection can become more as links are followed (and as you choose who you will follow), but not necessarily.

Social has become a pretty literal word.

There has been some rapid and totally unexpected spill-over for me as I surrender my “Why bother?” learning time. I have noticed that my blog posts are getting shorter and less frequent (finally!) for now that I “get” Tumblr and Twitter I more fully understand how short attention span has become no matter how much people may love or admire you. It ain’t personal: When they choose new learning of their own, some time may be stolen from old-style conversations. Our capacity for life has this wondrous yet annoying way of stretching much larger than the time we manage to stay awake and function well! Twitter (and the books I purchased after A Love Affair With Books) has had a pretty dramatic effect on my own RSS feed-reading: Blogs that were “on probation” now have a much shorter time in which to make the cut with me. Am I being more efficient, or less patient?

And the duplicity of reciprocation and paying it forward is not lost on me: I am completely aware of how I may be in the same boat with someone else judging my citizen publishing – and me as publisher.

Let’s bring this back to Joyful Jubilant Learning

What more can we learn from the aha! moments we experience within our Digital Learning here and elsewhere? Most, if not all of us participate in several virtual communities: What experiences can we bring back to this one here at JJL, evolving in our best possible way? How is our own Ho‘ohana Community to get better within the conversations had here, and more supportive of the learning initiatives of all who wish to engage with us?

Please share your ideas, for I am quite positive that every single author here would love to hear them.

~ Rosa Say

Earlier this month: Talking Story and a JJL Twitter Soiree

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Post author Rosa Say is the author of Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawaii's Universal Values to the Art of Business, and she currently writes for Managing with Aloha Coaching, Value your Month, Value your Life.

Rosa also serves as the managing editor of Joyful Jubilant Learning; her letter for 2008 can be found on our About Page.

For all of Rosa's writing aggregated in just one place, visit her Tumblr, Ho‘ohana Aloha.

Comments

[David Zinger]

Rosa
I appreciated your statement: we choose how and if we engage. I believe many of us are trying a vast array of social media. I dabble in ones like twitter but concentrate on social networks - employee engagement. Right now, for me, JJL is about the right pace and and amount of writing and interaction. I loved the voice thread and I attempted a few months back to write a joint post one sentence at a time. I like communal efforts and focused months. I lack the energy or time for this now but it would be nice to see a free e-book of the best articles. Each author could pick their 1 or 2 favorites and this could be showcased on the site to collect the "best of" and to offer our work in yet another medium.
David

[David Zinger]

There, their, I made a spelling mistake above. Sorry. Reminds me of Gertrude Stein's statement: When you get there, you find there is no there, there. So please change there in the last sentence to their.

[Joanna Young]

Rosa, thank you for this thoughtful reflection. I enjoyed reading it and getting an insight into some of your own thought and learning processes.

One of the things I love about Twitter is that there aren't absolute rules. (Well maybe a few at the extremes, but not many). Different people use it in different ways. Some chose to follow a few dozen, others thousands. Some people like to listen to friends who interact a lot, others prefer people who have more stand alone replies, because they're easier to follow, and give less of an impression of being part of a club. I like the way it's so easy to chose to follow (and unfollow) people that suit and reflect you.

In the same way others will make their own choices about why to follow you. There's no one right way to do it.

I also find Twitter more human and personal than blogging. It's hard to have A-list authority when you're writing 140 characters at a time. Everyone has the same weight.

I'm struggling to explain why I like it so. Your description of it being like talking story was one of the best I've come across.

Back to JJL. I wonder if the lesson is that we could try ways to be more fluid and flexible about what involvement and engagement looks like. Using more different media, which allows for the possibility of shorter posts (a photo, a movie clip, an audio recording) but still within the framework of one monthly theme (I think the themed approach is working well).

I love the voicethread too. Sharing our voices has added something very powerful to the mix. I'd like to find a way to build on this without it becoming a burden or a 'should' - for me or other people.

Joanna

[Steve Sherlock]

Rosa, good posting. "Am I being more efficient, or less patient" or are you beginning to recognize the problem with continuous partial attention?

As one who has been spreading my writing around, I am continuing to withdraw from some activites to allow more time for those remaining to continue.

How we structure the environment leads to behaviour within the environment. I think we need to continue to have a variety of experiences within the group so that all can benefit from the sharing and exploring in each our own ways. It is not that we all need to walk that way, but we can learn from the efforts of others.

VoiceThread being one current and excellent example. Joanna had the time to explore, got us exposed and some got hooked. Greg has one and others have indicated they wll be able to use it in their worlds. This type of sharing is where I find great benefit from the group.

Honk! Honk!

[Rosa Say]

David, one of the things on my mind lately is how to better track all the great ideas that come up so that follow-up eventually does happen with them (and hopefully sooner versus later). For there are tremendously great ideas that too easily get rolled right over by the new inputs... and yet we want the new inputs too!

Joanna, at one point I was concerned that our monthly theming here would inhibit greater freedoms of expression, however time has proved otherwise, and I think your Voice Thread experiment for us was a good example of how much a single theme can contain while keeping us somewhat Lōkahi (unified and in pleasing harmony). John's very timely posting yesterday on financial learning was another example of how the community focus stretches to embrace our fuller capacity.

I used to think of community as a circle, as in Stephen R. Covey's circles of Concern and of Influence (wherein he has Center of Focus in the middle), but virtual communities are changing my view constantly, and now I think more of weavings in and out, with every woven thread leaving behind another strand that makes the whole so much stronger. The early digerati calling the internet a "web" were very insightful.

Steve, the combination of your comment and Joanna's gives me pause in considering the difference between supportive "structure" and inhibiting "rules." Oh my... your comments have me going again in all sorts of directions this morning! I am not complaining though, I so love the mental gymnastics I get from our discussions here!

Readers? I would so love to hear from more of you!

[Leah Maclean]

Twitter is one of those examples of a digital learning/communication environment that people love or hate. As a solo working small business owner I see Twitter as a virtual office kitchen/water cooler.

When I was in the corporate world some of the most interesting conversations I had about what was going on in the company/industry/city came when I was making a coffee/lunch/snack or just generally avoiding work in the kitchen. But when you are working by yourself and your start asking questions of the dogs/cats then it might be time to start engaging in some sort of virtual kitchen catchups with colleagues around the world or around the corner.

My friend and colleague Des Walsh had good advice about learning to use Twitter once - he said (and I'm paraphrasing) don't see Twitter as a lake that you must jump into and consume the whole thing, see it as a passing river that you sip from whever it and you happen to be.

Thanks for being part of my virtual kitchen Rosa :-)

[Angela Maiers]

Rosa, your thoughts always both inform and inspire me! As a new "Twitterbug" myself-I was hesitant to add another thing to my learning plate. Like you, Twitter has had a dramatic effect on my communication habits. The connections are incredible. This month has so helpful for both the readers and contributors on JJL as we are all trying to find our way in this new,exciting digital world.

As a side note, I want to wish you a very happy and blessed birthday. You do so much for others, I am wishing for you a day to yourself. You deserve it!

[Rosa Say]

Aloha Leah, I like the water-cooler analogy, and right now, in the beginning of my own talking story on Twitter, I feel somewhat like the UPS gal who is making deliveries on different floors of a huge office building! Each floor has its own water-cooler community, and I stop in to make my ‘deliveries’ there when I know they are most active, joyously finding they are all pretty happy to see me when they are around and have time for their own water-cooler stops.

Because of the real-time nature of it I am learning so much about time differences in the rest of the world, and that the common activities we share – like arriving at work, or deciding when to call it a day – can have such unique flavors to them.

And Leah, I LOVE being part of your virtual kitchen too :)

[Rosa Say]

Angela, I think we have discovered the same thing, that CONNECTION is trumping the concerns we initially had about Twitter being a time-sink. Admittedly, today has not been my normal day there because of my birthday, however I was amazed at how many direct msgs came through to me on Twitter instead of as blog comments.

As we engage we learn that we CAN be the ones who regulate that flow of the stream that Leah mentions, and that people are so respectful there of your choices. It really doesn't eat up that much time when you get into your rhythm of best intersection with others there.

I'm thinking again about what Joanna added in her comment, saying "One of the things I love about Twitter is that there aren't absolute rules... There's no one right way to do it."
And she added,
"I also find Twitter more human and personal than blogging. It's hard to have A-list authority when you're writing 140 characters at a time. Everyone has the same weight."

She is so right about that 140 character limit serving as an amazing variable in and of itself!

Mahalo for the birthday wish Angela :) I am having an extraordinary day and will be giving myself a birthday-off every year from now on!