Affordances for Distributed Learning

As indicated previously, this week at OISE/UT we've been asked to use the blogs we have for our class contributions. Specifically we've been asked to consider blogs as well as the "traditional" or threaded discussions we typically use for knowledge building in online environments.

The question I'd like to address in this post, relates to the "affordances" we need to make when working in either of these online environments.

What do you find are the affordances of blogs and the affordances of the discussion environment for different kinds of thinking:

Specifically:

Do they both support aspects of distributed constructionism? of distributed intelligence? please explain

While both dicussion groups and blogs support "distributed constructionism" it is my belief that blogs are a better type of interface for building and disseminating knowledge. I think there are a number of reasons for this:

1. Blogs are forums that individual contributors (i.e., the "owner" of the blog in question) need to make work


2. Even though the process of blogging may be a solitary pursuit, "public" posts are more likely to be thoughtful and pertinent to the topic(s) at hand


3. Blogs are more likely to referenced by others and thus contribute to the "relationship" or "social" aspect of the "network" in question.


4. While each blog may stand on its own, the more it is linked by others, the more popular and relavant it becomes to the others members of a given "community" of "network"