As far as I know a Learning History hasn't been created online like this before. Hitherto it's been a written document. In written Learning Histories, like the individual Histories in this research, there are different commentaries: multiple voices and analyses are presented alongside a story thread. In this way the reader can pick and choose how they read the History - honing in on the parts that are most appealing to him/her.
The categories on this Blog have been chosen to emulate the mix. Categories like 'reflecting', 'theorising', 'storytelling', 'analysing' relate directly to the different ways of representing you can see in written Learning Histories. This multi-threaded nature of a Learning History can be even more richly presented online. By selecting categories as well as working more from photos, a reader can more flexibly choose which mode of representation they wish to use to engage with this Learning History.
A Learning History is as much a process of participation as it is an output. For this reason I have chosen verbs for the categories rather than nouns. I wanted to indicate that this is a live and evolving process. Online Blogging offers a dynamic quality that you don't get with a written document. I am deliberately choosing to expose the creation of this Joint Learning History as it goes along to participants. This feels risky - it feels personally exposing and also it's not usual to submit a blog as part of PhD. However I am doing this again in the spirit of experimentation and will reflect on some of this in the category 'researching'. It feels more congruent with the notion of participation to expose the creation of the History than to hide away and then reveal it at a later stage. The categories of 'participating' and 'taking actions' and 'questioning' particularly speak to the desire to involve or at least emphasize the voices of the many participants in this research. The use of photos directly from the workshop also emphasize this point. I want to present, in a coherent way, an uneditted view of participant's thoughts and comments.
In summary then there are categories that relate to content: these relate to the individual learning histories and, as important, there are the categories that refer to different activities around those histories.
In this way I hope to produce a Learning History that is inviting, even messier than normal, but truly a 'jointly told tale'.
You can read a background story about how I got started with this Learning History research here.
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