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purpose

Page history last edited by PBworks 17 years, 9 months ago

What is LCB's Purpose?

An articulated purpose or mission statement is beneficial to everyone involved in any group activity like Learning Circuits Blog. It helps authors focus what they choose to write. It helps visitors understand how to interpret the posts and subsequent comments already published. It allows potential readers the opportunity to decide whether or not visiting the site might be valuable to them in context of their work and interests. A purpose statement provides a common ground around which everyone can gather, thus forming a group understanding and a group voice.

 

Given your experience with LCB, do you feel that it has a clear purpose? Why should it exist? Or should it?

 

Some of the questions that have been asked in various conversations over the past year include:

  • Are we a community or a pulpit? (Mark Oehlert) (see comments below)
  • LCB should be about discussion and engagement rather than authoring and publishing. (Godfrey Parkin)
  • I really never could figure out what LCB really was about. (Alan Levine)

 

Need something to react to? Check out this mission statement the LCB Blog Squad developed last year.

COMMENTS (You can edit above or add your opinions and reactions below)

 

I think some of this depends on who our target audience is. Except for those who actually post comments, we don't know who reads LCB or why. I think that we are talking to experienced learning professionals with a strategic view, rather than people new to the field. I think our purpose is to stimulate thought, discussion and action. If we are only going to be reporting on what's going on in the learning field, we have limited utility. LCB should not be merely a mirror; like a pebble cast into a pond, it should generate ripples that actually facilitate the achievement of change.

(Godfrey Parkin)

 

I'm still really torn (or at least undecided) on this topic. I can see benefits to both a site that is more information source than anything and I can also see benefits to a site that is more a broadcast point for a strong viewpoint. On the information side, there is just so much of it, one of the dynamics we are already seeing with sites like digg.com and even amazon recommendations - is the use of a community to help sift through some of the tidal wave of info that is out there. This community (both the Blog Squad and our two readers ;-)) could be an amazing filter to see what we all feel is important enough news to rise to the top.

 

On the other hand, we have an amazing collection of minds (present author excluded) here and I think one of the most valuable things that could come out of this group is - not a raw feed but a stream of thougt concerning issues important to the learning community - that is more open, more forceful and less 'varnished' than a lot of the other stuff that is normally propagated.

 

So I'm really looking for some additional input - where does our value lie? Community or Pulpit?

(Mark Oehlert)

 

I resonate with Mark's dilemmas. I see two issues, one theoretical, one pragmatic.

 

First, given a 'home', and a suite of intelligent and articulate (excluding myself) 'reflective practitioners' (to use Schon's term), what's the best value to our audience? If it's not completely participatory (ala ITFORUM or, I infer, TRDEV), and I'll suggest it's not, at least not directly, then how do we organize ourselves?

 

The second issue is the pragmatic one of having it done in a way that works for us as busy people. I like Godfrey's suggestion of a mail list as I'm much better responding to email than I am at remembering to go to a list, read, log in, post, etc.

 

I've put a suggestion on the strawman page of an alternate model that (I think) captures a plausible blend of theory and pragmatism...

(Clark Quinn)

 

I enjoy having a commercial-free zone for discussion. I, too, like the give and take when people respond to an issue.


start purpose liked disliked audience strawman exemplars FAQ

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