Reflections on my development as a networked practitioner

Now that the first two assignments are out of the way, I've been thinking towards the conference and the EMA (End of Module Assignment). One part of the EMA is a critical reflection on my development as a networked practitioner. For those outside of H818, that means I have to consider how I've learned to use communication with my fellow students and other peers and colleagues to help me in producing my materials and resources.

Suddenly, three stars and a wish spring to mind. That's the primary school teacher rearing up again!

At the beginning of the course, I was consciously blogging, posting, commenting and tweeting about as much as I could. I tried to make friends with my H818 peers and together, we tried to build a supportive environment, where we could share our work and evaluate and critique it, in order to make it better.

Then, work and the amount of study gradually increased and maybe participation became harder to maintain. Also, at the beginning, only a handful of us leapt straight in and that was manageable, whereas now, trying to keep up with and network with 24 people and their projects is impossible.

Around TMA times, there were peaks and lulls in the amount of network activity in general but we were all focussed on the same basic tasks. Moving forward, it's going to become more about our individual projects and creating our artefacts and conference presentations. The only way I can see to manage this and make the networking valuable, is to select a handful of projects to remain actively involved with. I've chosen five, of which two will be my contrast projects for the EMA.

So this seemed a good time to reflect on what I'm doing well and what I need to do better. I think I've been quite open in posting my work, even early drafts and I've used feedback to make improvements. I have given feedback to others but it's been rather sporadic and dependent on when people post, rather than what. Today, I've looked on Open Studio at the two projects I'm following closely and checked out my participation thus far. I was a bit disappointed really, as I'm very interested in these projects but haven't given them my best attention.

My main action, going forward, is to set aside time each week to read the blogs, tweets and other posts of John and Chris, whose projects I am following, and post some better quality feedback as their artefacts develop. I'll also try to keep up with the other three that I'm interested in and respond more to those than to people who happen to have posted just before I logged in.