#FolioFriday is a quickly spent hour. Each week I try to focus on my writing and thought. This is when the restless “monkey mind” of mine, appreciates calm and a regular routine. Even happier when my shared writing is in the company of friends. Bit like evening boarding school prep time!
FolioFriday allows me to make my voice clearer, to pull thoughts from what I know, draw ideas together from what I’ve read and concentrate this work alongside a few other people in the room. This blogging of mine sometimes does seem self-indulgent. However, the many blog posts that I have been reading over the years, have launched my practice and encouraged me to do something similar.
If FolioFriday leads to a community of academics, consultants, ed techies, teachers, young people, who would like to spend an hour thinking out loud, writing another report, or updating Foliofriday. africa in pleasant company, I’ll see that as a draw. If FolioFriday allows me (and you) to become a better writer, I’ll see that as a win.
There is a need to systematize this event, and so while blogging here, these are a few things that I need to prioritise.
- Regularise my workflow so it fits with Folio Friday
- Sort out the FolioFriday announcements and mailing list
- Try find a way to help us all note our progress and recognise ongoing commitment
- Improve / document a blogging routine.
Regularize my own workflow
Michael, Paul and I are planning to publish a chapter in the journal Post Digital Science and Education. Deadline is the 1 December 2024.
I’ve also been invited to submit an abstract by another friend
Am always pleased to have the opportunity to contribute my thinking among peers. If you look at my Orcid, you will see that I have not published that much among scholars. Read far too many trade publications and not enough scholarly work.
So before I begin the arduous/stimulating task of thinking with peers. I’m wondering if I can be a be a bit meta, articulate the implicit and explicit steps I (should) take when I am writing, putting a course together, coding a page. This is my attempt at workflow. I’ll divide the process into three (Prior, Authoring and Wrap). (Please note, this probably will change as I refine my process)
PRIOR | The pre-planning phase
- Explore the idea. If this work is self generated, I open the folder named _Fiddle. If I am pitching to a client, I open the folder called _Prospects. Within each I create a folder with a date.
- Understand at the brief. My inclination is always to jump in, and then hope that everything co-coalesces and fits into place. This works sometimes, but other times scope creep happens and the work becomes far bigger than it should be. As I begin to understand and process the brief, I take a large sheet of paper out and draft out the scope with an flatplan, sitemap, canvas or mindmap (FSPM). This is when I use pen, pencils, paint, paper.
- Look at the brief again. Draft a “running head” on the chosen FSPM, but now make this format digital. The running head should indicate the content and attract attention, be short and simple and be aimed at a specific audience.
- Select the authoring environment. Choose the environment. Will I use Word, Scrivener, my Wikipedia Sandbox, the shell I’ve set up on Github, my CodePen playground, the etherpad or my HTML template. You are going to be drawing on other people’s ideas. So have a mechanism available to ensure credit is given. Create a sub folder entitled “desktop research” in _fiddle or _prospects. For example, if writing in Word, use the Zoterro plugin. If designing a presentation, and finding images on Flickr, use Alan’s bookmarks
- Prepare to submit the proposal. Proposal should reflect the client identity (logo, colours), the running head, date of submission. Before you do this, remember to
- spell and grammar check,
- refresh references through Zotero.
- add page breaks,
- update table of comments,
- make sure figures and diagrams have a caption
- Write a cover letter. This introduces the running head, defines the jargon, indicates the focus. You could describe (in white text on the title page), where you see things going next. After sending off, set a follow up date on email. Then follow up and ask for feedback.
AUTHORING | The production phase
Ideally, the title, abstract and outline has been generated in the prior phase. That is my draft. The authoring process work might be approached with Pew & Mavor’s “Incremental Commitment Spiral Model” (2007) and / or Wenger’s Systems Convening”.
- Exploration and / or Convergence
- Valuation and / or Boundaries
- Foundations and / or Identity
- Development and / or Agency
- Recognition
These different provides a way for individuals, organizations or projects to incrementally experiment and evolve within the terrain they are working
ICSM’s key practices and to evolve toward process models better suited to their
needs and competitive environment
Make my documents better
One of my constant problems when writing a document is identifying my audience. Its not that I don’t know who I am speaking to, its that “the audience” is located in different territories and each audience have a different things that they want to accomplish. So questions like this are not always helpful.
Q: Who are you addressing with your document?
A: Who do you want me to address. The funder, the target audience or the scholarship? The three are very different and I’ll illustrate this with an example of Google Maps. If the funder is from Europe or Canada, then they have a certain imaginary about using maps to find their way around. If the target audience is from a small country in Africa, where Google street view is not included and data is too expensive to use maps on your phone, then there is no point in referring to Google streetview. And if I quote Polish Philosopher Alfred Korzybski and say “The map is not the territory”, but I cannot go any deeper. It’s not because I’m lazy. It’s because access to Science and Sanity is a little harder for me, with my office off campus and no meaningful library access available, to address this deficiency. My reaction to these audience uncertainties is to begin from my own head and experience. Precisely the wrong place to write a document from.
So, finding common ground between your different audiences, , when the terrain is so uneven, is difficult. Perhaps its helpful to have
- a shared goal,
- named stages or stopping points along your journey
- a clear outline of remains to be done.
So that I can progress and achieve my collective goal.
WRAP | Pulling it all together.
This is the hardest part for me (and I confess, that there is a big gap between this part of my blog post and the previous sections), because I have not know really how to wrap this up. Conclusions seems like a recurring issue and discussing it feels very uncomfortable. I will be adding to this. But for now: On the day or week of publication:
- Put the publication onto your CV
- Upload a PDF copy to your web site
- Compile my bibliography with Zotero and share
- Update your meta data on Wikidata
- Write a b;og post about it.
Thanks to https://acs.ist.psu.edu/papers/how-to-write-papers.txt for inspiration