What Do You Do When You Find A New Site?

This morning I came across an unfamiliar site through a post-link I’d followed on a familiar blog. As usual, I did a perfunctory scan of the header and layout of the page. That took a few seconds. Then I got into reading the post. It was well written and the topic was fresh and interesting.

I was almost through the second paragraph when the inquisitor in me took my attention to look for the date of the posting. It wasn’t prominent nor was the post date easy to find. I flicked down to the comments section and picked the date of the first comment: October 21, 2008.

I resumed reading, having sorted in my mind the post’s place in time. About a third way through the text, I started inspecting intermittently the blogroll, names of commenters, checking out links to other sites, while continuing to read. I recognised that I was looking for links to sites or blogs that I might know.

Priority

It was then I realised that I was subconsciously prioritising my time, and my reading, by checking out the authenticity of the writer before getting further into what was quite a meaty post. In particular, I was scrutinising what I had gleaned from the post so far, weighing that against what I already knew.

I recalled doing this many times in the past when I had come across commercial sites and others that might waste my time while reading cogent story lines that amount to nothing - or worse, pernicious propaganda. The ‘trust’ mechanism within me kicks in fairly rapidly these days. It tends to be vicious if I suspect my time is being wasted.

Do young learners need this?

It also occurred to me that the routine I’d just accomplished was one difficult to explain to a young learner who may need to discover a thing or two about appraising the authenticity of information found on the Internet.

By flitting through what to others may seem a jumble of unrelated checks, I sketch an overview of where the post lies in relation to what I already know. This amounts to my knowledge of the topic and associated writers or sites familiar to me, as well as the possible up-to-date-ness of the information likely to be proffered by the content of the post.

How do you recognise baloney?

My usual reaction to bogus information, once it’s identified, is instantly to wipe all that I’d held in the temporary enquiry channel of my thinking to do with what I’d read in the post or article, and move on.

Over the years I’ve developed what Carl Sagan referred to as a baloney detection kit. It is only part of the routine I practice when checking out information or ideas new to me. It kicks in at an advanced stage for there is no need to use it if I’d already identified bogus information from perfunctory checks and judicious hunches.

What do you do when you come across a post on a blog new to you or article on an unfamiliar site on the web?

Do you use a routine to check out authenticity?

What would you do if you found that all your commonly used checks and routines returned insufficient information for you to form a useful opinion about the authenticity of an article, or of the information contained there?

An Amazing Journey

This post is a dedication to the people who have shared a spot in the blogosphere – who have brought much enjoyment, companionship and wisdom – who have permitted us to exchange views and opinion, experience and learning – who have brought an enormous cornucopia of thoughts, ideas and achievements here at Middle-earth.

How great the feeling is to receive support, encouragement and reassurance at times of need. That’s what I’ve experienced lately, initiated entirely by visitors who have been reading my recent posts.

Blogging isn’t easy without a PC. I was feeling as if I’d lost touch with the ‘ether’ – the ‘fluence’, as it were. I saw my fledgling blog-spot flapping its wee wings and disappearing into oblivion.

But no. I believe it is just my perception, for the circle is still there.
I am, and always have been, thankful for the support of those in my commentsphere.

Not so lonely traveller:

This is an amazing journey. The ‘lonely traveller’ is not so lonely, for so many helpful friends are met and made on the way.

At this time, I’m particularly grateful to my work colleagues who have dropped by and cheered me with their chummy banter. They are newcomers to my commentsphere but I sense that they are not newcomers to the blogspot.

They, and many other welcome visitors like them, affirm that it’s not the blog posts that make the blog. A blog without visitors is like a child’s party without children.

What use are all the nuts, apples, oranges, lemons and grapes
if there’s no one to munch them and spit out the pips?

Trust In Blogs

Trust is a strange and capricious emotion. Its composition is built on experience from the moment of birth. The bonding between parent and child is a fabric woven out of the intimacy and trust within that relationship.

It manifests itself in the early school years when relationships are fashioned within groups of children. A child’s learning is influenced by the trust placed in the teacher, and likewise the trust the teacher has for the learner.

A foundation of partnerships:

Trust is the foundation of partnerships, whether in friendship, marriage, business, or trade and exchange. The lack of it can preclude the formation of any of those alliances and can lead to disputes, fights, battles and wars.

People in business, and in sales in particular, are aware of the reliance of success on trust between vendor and client, or between agents in partnerships.

Britt Watwood’s post, The Trust Factor, discusses trust from the point of view of trustworthiness as a quotient. At that time he had been introduced to a web device designed to assess a trust quotient.

Trust in blogs:

Recently, interest has been centred on people’s trust in blogs, and particularly though not exclusively in company blogs, fuelled by the latest report by Forrester Research Inc.

Tony Karrer’s recent post, No Trust, is a reflective take on this, and the opinions expressed by others. I left a comment, and he responded:

Often we don't have time to get to know someone. Rather we have to make snap judgements based on little pieces of information. There are lots of great resources from libraries about this problem of evaluation. Most of us have our patterns figured out. But what's interesting is to hear other people's likely patterns. Oh, this is a blog by someone I don't know - I don't trust this information.

Tony is right, of course. Often there is no time to form a trust of a situation or of a person. But with a blog, there are other emotions that can arise within the reader. Time is less urgently associated with the decision-making.

The power of the blog:

There is a complex mix of emotions, conceptions, misconceptions and beliefs that may well lead to diversity in how people view blogs. The wonderful thing about blogs for unprejudiced minds is that they can permit discussions to unfold.

Our discussion brought us to a consensus, and demonstrated the power that the blog post has to bring about accord. Isn’t that what it’s all about? I’d like to think so. I am grateful to Tony, and to blogging, for the opportunity to share our opinions across the globe.

My comment to Tony was much along the following lines:

There may well be a need to distinguish between not trusting a person/company/blog and saying that person/company/blog is untrustworthy.

I am clearly not going to 'trust' a person that I've never met before (why should I trust them?) BUT it would be libel for me here to say that person is untrustworthy. My experience is that some people cannot tell the difference between not trusting, and untrustworthy.

Distrust in blogs:

I can understand the distrust that readers have when they come across a blog for the first time. I believe it's a similar emotion that prevents a lot of people from ever putting a comment on a post. Some people just 'don't trust' the Internet. They may even think that it's untrustworthy.

There are many examples of this (type of) distrust. For instance, when telephone banking was first introduced, people distrusted that system.

When Internet banking became a reality, people distrusted it for the same reason – they needed time to gather more information about it, to hear of successful use, to meet people they knew who used it successfully. What would not reinforce their trust in the systems would be reports of Internet fraud or other things going wrong.

A mix of emotions:

There is a mix of emotions that most people experience when they have to put their trust in something or in someone. The transactional analysis of such a situation indicates that the would-be-participant has a degree of lack of confidence that explains their unwillingness to trust.

So I’d say that it is logical for someone to say, "Oh, this is a blog by someone I don't know - I don't trust this information."

Acquiring trust is a process:

The process of gaining trust is cyclical, with an indeterminate period. Observations are checked against a list of criteria. The list may be a defined checklist or it may simply be a list of doubts in the mind of the observer. In most instances it’s a list of doubts.

People who are duped by a person/company/blog have not utilised their cognitive abilities to the best, and some would just say that they were “too trusting”.

The snap decision:

In business circles, snap decisions are being made all the time - you will know this. Sometimes the decisions made, purportedly based on trust, are the wrong ones. I would say that in any snap decision, there is not sufficient time for it to be based on trust, for it takes time for the iterative cycle to permit trust to be established.

So when a person comes across a person/company/blog for the first time, they make a snap decision based on what they know. It requires an analytical mind to know what to do to validate their first formed opinion, to verify their doubts.

A few home truths:

Let me share a few home truths with you, for I am the most trusting person I know. :-)

If my experience was that I was often duped through interaction with people/companies/blogs, or I’d heard of the same happening among my friends, I might be disinclined to have anything to do with people/companies/blogs. I’m not like that of course.

Some would say that I was a very distrusting person. I’d tend to refute that statement and say that I am discerning and analytical.

I try to verify, almost unequivocally, any first formed opinion that I may have (of trust OR distrust) before I make any significant decision, other than transactional ones.

Unfortunately (either for me or others) most people aren’t like me. It's probably why I’m in the minority sector of society who reads blog posts and comments on them, never mind blogging about it.

related posts - >> ( 4 ) ( 3 ) ( 2 ) ( 1 )

TRUST - A Strange Human Emotion

Manish Mohan has only recently written a post about trust. He made me think about this, and the decisions that I may have to make when I read a blog post.

I thank Manish for making me ponder deeply about this matter. He prompted me to leave a comment on his post that carried a weighty and profound question: Do You Trust Corporate Blogs? It went something like this:

Trust is a strange human emotion. It is deep-rooted in our instinctive mechanisms for survival. When the reason for a decision based on trust is analysed, it is often found to be highly complex. The nature of the complexity is often found to be meshed with a whole raft of subliminal things: hunches, preferences, likes and dislikes, gut feelings, undefined reasons.

It is rarely cut and dry - rarely logical.

So when you ask, "Do you trust corporate blogs?" I think about trust, and what it is based on.

You could say, "do you trust blogs?" Many people don't trust blogs - never mind the corporate bit.

And so we move on to ask questions like, "what is it about a particular blog that you trust?" You could also say, "why trust blogs at all?"

A more in-depth analysis of trust (associated with blogs or any other Internet sites) will yield other questions. Questions like, "how can you tell that a site is trustworthy? (Never mind the 'blog' or the 'corporate' bit).

For me, all sites have to be tested by my baloney detector, whether corporate or not. As naive as it may seem, I apply exactly the same detection kit to all blogs that I read (and all posts for that matter).

Trust is a movable feast. The occurrences on sites permit me to decide whether to trust them or not. There are some sites that I used to trust, and now trust no longer. I don't visit these sites anymore - at least, if I happen to come across them, I don’t comment on them. It's a bit like the people I meet in everyday life.

I recently received a request from a company (which I won't name here) to post articles on my blog. Effectively I was being asked to host articles.

The email included a couple of links to company sites. I looked at the sites. They were corporate and commercial. The advertising that would come with the articles I might agree to host contravened my comment guidelines. I immediately treated the request (which incidentally was written like a personal email) as spam. End of story.

Did I trust the request? Yes. Did I trust the attendant sites? No.

So, do I trust corporate sites? The answer is, it depends.

I am no more likely to 'trust' a corporate site than any other site that I come across. Every site I read is judged (by me) on its own merits.

( 5 ) << - related posts - >> ( 3 ) ( 2 ) ( 1 )

250 Comments in Four Days!

Doing my usual catch-up, I read Ken Stewart's latest on Help Find Great Blogs. I'd to link through to Chuck Westbrook’s post for more.

While the idea Chuck has is still a bit odd in my mind, I have to give it to him that he knows a thing or two about getting comments on posts. When I popped my comment, I came in at number 222!

No, my fingers don’t have a tremble. Not yet anyway.

I checked out the comments on Chuck’s post today. Nicole Feliciano had put the latest one. She was at number 249! From when I put my comment, till Nicole put hers, Chuck's post gained 27 more comments.

I’ve never had anything near 20 comments on my blog let alone 249.

It’s Monday 27 October. Chuck's post went up last Thursday.
It's getting 5 comments every hour, and they’re still coming in.

This is impressive stuff!

Just on the side - and it could be unrelated - but the Reading Ease of Chuck’s post came in at 76.3.

Procrastinating can tire the brain

Charles Green’s recent post, Do People Trust Rationally? prompted me to leave a comment. He got me thinking about how trust could possibly be formed quickly through rationality. I procrastinated a bit before I typed in my comment. After that, I had to have a cup of tea and a lie down.

The brain tires like a muscle:

In a recent paper, Professor On Amir suggests that the brain works in a similar way to a muscle, in that “when depleted, it becomes less effective.” Deliberating and procrastinating over making choices depletes the so-called executive resources in the brain. As a result, subsequent decision-making can be adversely affected when making choices with a tired brain.

But it is the switch from deliberating to actually executing the choice that does the depleting, says Amir. People with overtaxed brains make worse decisions than those whose brains are well rested. Those who do not deliberate make decisions that also tend to be inferior.

Trust is about choice:

It's supposed to be cool to be capricious, cool to be democratic (whatever that means), cool to be so laid back you fall off the fence. When it comes to making a choice, there is a whole mystique associated with that moment of decision. Often there is an urgency associated with making the right choice and a person has to draw on the executive functions when executing that choice.

In my comment on Charles’ post, I maintained that decisions about trust that are made rapidly, are less likely to be useful. Most people don't like being unsure about certain things. In situations where trust is seen to be important, they feel an urgency to make up their minds. So they will find short-cuts to do this quickly, presumably saving on their brain’s executive function:

"I didn't like the shoes he was wearing . . . "

"Something about the way she came into the room . . . "

"I always distrust a man with a beard . . . ", etc.

Unease in uncertainty:

When there is a need to make a choice or form an opinion about trust, there is a discomfort that people feel until their mind is made up. The ease that is felt when this is done is gratifying to such an extent that it tends to dispel residual doubt about the first formed opinion. It's almost as if it's chemical, like a shot of alcohol, for it brings about a feeling of wellbeing.

Comfort can be found in the smug idea, "I know I'm right." Doubt is pushed into the background by this. As positive as people might be about their own opinion, later they may still want to look for other evidence to support their choice. Goethe was purported to have said, "If you look for evidence to support your opinion, you'll find it."

Deliberation makes for sound decisions:

Though procrastinating and making a decision involving trust may deplete the executive function of the brain, it is likely to be superior to a decision made without forethought. In some ways this is the payoff for the mental effort that is spent. Trust built through rationality takes time. It has to be earned, and achieving that can take a long time. When it eventually happens through this formative process, it can be deep and solemn - a trust on which life-long relationships are built.

Can sound trust be built quickly? If it is proved that trust quickly formed remains in tact over a long and testing period of time, was it through good judgement that it was built? Or was it just pure chance that the right decision was made?

( 5 ) ( 4 ) << - related posts - >> ( 2 ) ( 1 )

Working Within a Framework in the Curriculum

“I find it hard to look at the ‘experts’ for guidance.
Experts brought us to the broken model we are in.” David Truss.

It’s fascinating how a comment can stimulate thought. The quote is from a comment on Jennifer Jones’s post, Background Noise.

It left me thinking long and hard about senior secondary education in New Zealand, where it had come from and where it is going.

In November 1991 the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) launched the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) that sits over the New Zealand Curriculum. Its vision is:

‘quality learning outcomes for all,
ngā hua akoranga kounga mō te katoa’.

The requirements of the learner

Designed to “establish the parameters for nationally recognised qualifications”, its primary focus is to “be the requirements of the learner.” Assessment is to “focus on the measurement of learner performance against published standards” leading towards the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). The New Zealand Ministry of Education (MoE) and NZQA are currently reviewing over 2000 individual standards as part of a strategy to bring them in line with the new curriculum.

Lifelong benefits to students

The full Framework for NCEA Levels 1 to 3 is in its 5th year and has been fraught with difficulties. It is meant to help in meeting the needs for lifelong education and training. It is supposed to cover both general and career learning through a single, coordinated framework of qualifications, “the majority being supported by curriculum statements and learning materials”.

The New Zealand Curriculum, administered by the MoE, provides directions for learning and guidance. Yet the only mention of this in the authoritative document on the Framework is given in the last quote:

“the majority being supported by curriculum statements and learning materials”.

Study strategies geared to the standards

The confine of the Framework means that it is now no longer easy for teachers and students to explore the curriculum freely. Teachers who have little time as it is to cover all that’s required to prepare students for the end of year standards examinations have also to teach and assess students against standards throughout the year.

A common question put by students to secondary teachers in New Zealand today is “will this help me get the standard?” Students don't want to spend time studying parts of the curriculum that do not lead to standard assessment, let alone something new and exciting someone brings to the lesson yet does not lie within a standard.

What's more alarming is that many students are now well aware of the importance of studying relevant to the confines of a standard in order to reach the required achievement award. Many intelligent students are also careful to tread only within the boundaries of the standards and their study strategies become geared to this approach.

Is this education?

Somehow I feel that it's not what education is about. I think there has to be a better way and I ask the questions:

• How are teachers to motivate their students to learn in the important areas of the curriculum not covered by a standard?
  
  
• How are teachers to bring a rich diversity to their lessons on many of the life-relevant issues not covered in the Framework?

Our schools are being driven by change.

"I find it hard to look at the ‘experts’ for guidance. Experts brought us to the broken model we are in." - David Truss.