This month is the first AECT blog-in

Over at Cognitive Dissonance, Nate posed the question, “How do we get members of a community (like the Association for Educational Communications and Technology) communicating with each other using the various technologies that we have available?”

A partial answer could be to show our colleagues the best stuff that’s out there. And the way to do that just might be to introduce them to reading RSS feeds. After all, reading feeds has the capacity to offer a daily dose of professional development and intellectual stimulation.

I’m still a doc student, so I'm compelled to offer support for this suggestion.

Gary Boyd commented that people are pressed for time to pay attention to these things. He says “there needs to be something really important to communicate about.” I hope our colleagues consider “the best stuff” really important and worth their attention.

In my case, I’m currently reading 124 feeds. I know I'm missing some and I could probably drop some. I’m sure the new-to-RSS crowd would appreciate suggestions for what to read. (They’d have to learn about blogrolls before they could use them).

Kay Persichitte speaks of her need to centralize communication within and among divisions. She’s not alone. RSS feeds can help – a point Descy’s May/June TechTrends column title tried to make calling RSS “Your one stop for news and information!” (Available here behind an AECT member login)

So, if reading RSS feeds help introduce our colleagues to these new technologies, how can we introduce them to RSS?

Scott Adams mentioned Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation model, and Moore’s application of DOI to technology marketing. If we look at Rogers’ Stages in the Innovation-Decision Process [pdf], we can find some guidance on “marketing” some of these technologies across the chasm to reach those “early majority” colleagues.

If it’s been a while since you’ve read Rogers' work, let me remind you of the stages.

• Knowledge. Our colleagues need to *know* about these new technologies.
  But how best to tell them and who best to tell them? Well, that just depends.
  Some learner analysis would be appropriate here. Broadly speaking, peers telling peers might be a reasonable overall strategy. It might have to be done face-to-face, though.


• Persuasion. This is where our colleagues look at the characteristics
  of the new technologies. If they can see the relative advantages (centralized
  communication, high-quality content) that's a step in the right direction.
  Add trialability (Bloglines is free) and observability (you can lurk forever with RSS feeds) to help make your case. Fortunately, aggregators
  are easy to use, avoiding a lot of complexity issues.


• Decision. Our colleague decides whether or not to try this
  new technology. If they give it a chance, they move into the ...


• Implementation stage where they adopt it or reject it. Finally, they reach
  the


• Confirmation stage where they either convince themselves they've made
  the right decision or they reverse their decision.

What happens after that will be interesting to see. For some people, reading quality RSS feeds will be as far as they go. Others will jump in to the conversations, commenting on provocative posts. A few will become more involved with some of the technologies we're so excited about using. Hopefully, some in that last group will be opinion leaders.

I don’t know what Trey Martindale and David Wiley have planned for their Hitchhiker’s Guide sessions at AECT, but I’m confident they’ll get some on board. I’d probably introduce Bloglines. It just might be the “starter drug” for the social software network!