Brief Wiki Notes

I have just listened to the WIKI meeting recording from 2 Oct and was sorry that I missed it. I was struggling to think how a community could develop in a WIKI but then once I started thinking about the use of Wiki Educator and open-source eduction resources, then it became a lot clearer (along with Wayne McIntosh's comments). I had never appreciated the use of the discussion tab- ahhh-thats where the community 'lives'.....Also- the question of whether a Wiki can be used as a respository was discussed. For me, that concept is brought about by the removal of just using static resources in education and now, introducing the use of living documents, in a WIKI (esp. Wikieducator). I took a few minutes to look at wikipedia and searched for
'online community' and then looked at the discussion tab as Wayne/Sarah suggested. I was amazed at the work behind the article resource page that I was looking at- the 'discussions' spanning over 3 years!!! Surely that was a community effort? same goes for the global warming example Sarah gave us- amazing....

Has anyone looked at the free training workshops yet ? (probably like me, running behind schedule without adding more to the pile..maybe after the course!)
thanks Debra

Blogging-better late than never I guess..

Unlike Rachel I cannot use the excuse I have been on holiday but I did have that conference and have been busy catching up with life after that, and now have students enrolling on a new online course, as well as looking after a colleaugues programme while she is in China!!!!
I was interested to read that the concept of blogoshere sort of got off the ground during the 2001 US Invasion of Afghanistan - a warblog community forming from the journalists present.

I have always thought of a 'blog' as a web-based diary, an idividual entity but I loved meeting this term-"the universe of discourse", implicating the use of blogs in (or for or as) a networked community -the "world of words"...the sphere of blogs...it appears though, that it is not enough to just run your own blog, what's needed is to blog for a purpose- to create connections with other bloggers and be able to keep track of these connections- certainly no mean feat.

On top of that, there is blogging in the business world, where it seems that to have a blog on your advertising web site is 'the latest trend'. But are they making connections? or are they just 'web-logs'.

Check this one, I subscribe to a free email service from NZ Gardener Magazine.
The weekly emails are great, full of really interesting stuff. People obviously email the magazine, through the web site, as there are always links in the emails with people's questions etc. But the Editor of the magazine also runs a Blog. She appears to be the only one writing on the blog- and there is only one comment. I haven't interviewed her, but my initial observations are that with some facilitation, the blog could be used a bit more, readers could be invited to participate on the blog. Going back to the purpose of the blog though, it might have only be set up only as the editor's personal blog, and maybe she was not expecting to create a blogging community of gardening enthusiasts. A search on Google for gardening blogs in NZ only showed this one. If I have time, I will email her and ask her what the intent was, and what she thinks of trying to expand the network.

A blogging network, for me, then is a group of like-minded people, writing blogs, joined by a common thread of interest by the bloggers, the joining occuring by action- making the connections (both technically and personally): by technically I mean- RSS feeds, tracking software etc: By personally, I mean a
motivation and committment from particpants to partipate. Be it shared knowledge or seeking similar, or sharing experiences.
But the community aspect doesn't just happen.

As previously mentioned, I recently attended the eFEST Open space unconference day, as part of T&L Conf 2009- the eFEST organisers set up a social networking site, to be used before, during and after the conference. During that day, we had access to a WIKI,
and it records the various discussions held during the day. One of the group sessions was on Communities of Practice and how do we (as educators) get our peer support....and how would like to get that support- have a look at the notes page- there are some comments that might be of interest- in my group we discussed that there are so many blogs- forums- out there, how do you start??? That facilitators ARE needed to drive the communities, and that virtual communities can still benefit from f2f- e.g a conference can spark the need, and people can connect later on via the networks set up at the conference (as is the case for this conference). Time was a big issue, and many people still used email amongst exising colleagues. I put in a good word for our FOC_09 attempt at building a community.....but it takes time to build the relationships. A degree of commitment and specific focus is needed.

Onto the next topic Wikis.....catching up slowly.
Debra

twitter et al

Hi Herve
I am not sure if Sarah will reply to you here, but thought I would add a comment. I have been particpating in the eFEST / Teaching and Learning Conference here at UCOL this week (still am) and all I seem to be hearing is TWITTER/.......people (educators) seem to be embracing it, but I suspect that is because it was used as a social tool for getting people to connect prior to, and during the conference. I have been involved in discussions where educators have new ideas about how to use it with their students, but mainly as a replacement for texting.....and I think it is because its new to them and some of the presenters are strong advocates. But I have heard twitter mentioned in the context of things like ""I can use twitter to have a conversation with my students "" - that is a bit scary to me, because it seems so one -sided. Yes, its quick and you can get the message out there really easily- you don;t have to worry about whether the student is connected to the LMS before they get your message (if they are online, they get the tweet..).. etc etc. But can you have a conversation??? Will be interested to hear others comments....

Thanks
Debra

Blogging Networks- at least starting to think about them...

I haven't done much investigative work yet (oops- time is marching by again), but I have been reading the blogs on this course. I am getting more interested in the history of the blogging regime, and how its being used in Education (and other areas). It seems that as the forms of web 2.0 communication evolve more, the uses change and blogs are now being used for a lot more than perhaps they were originally intended? Even for Business purposes Rachel? -I checked out our own institutes public web site and there is even a blog there-sadly though-its not being used obviously :-( so not much marketing there....)

I found this comment with respect to blogging being the killer Web 2.0 application that has the capacity to engage huge numbers of people (again) . It got me thinking about the reading we did earlier from Mark Pesce
"This, That and the Other") and the need for a 'something' to contextualize our social networks(of which Blogging is part). It seems that Blogoshere is a start.....I will need to keep reading it seems...I recognise 'Technorati' but only just...

I always thought of blogging as a just a reflective journey, more for self interest, rather than a social medium. From an education point of view, though, it looks like "it" ("This?") is starting to replace that weekly trip to the library where you used to go and read through all the latest journals and serials (to keep an eye on publications and news- I know, years ago, before we had the Internet on our Desktop computers at work). Now- you track your learned colleagues' blogs straight from our desks, and there are so many of them it seems!!! How do we start to connect? How do we chose who to follow?

It seems that 'the web' is a huge, huge, hyperlinked hyperspace that needs a huge commitment to start with, but once the connections are started, you just have to keep on the tracks and never get off, otherwise it will be too hard to reconnect- if you do, then there will likely be some new Web 2.0 software that reconnects you...

A good place I thought I would start with is with previous eFEST conferences, and check out people who I listened to over the last couple of years- see what they have been blogging about-

I'll post again when I have done more research....

DebraM

Another note on Forums

I was reading Herve's post and saw Sarah's comments about how many discussions forums are actually like "real communities" and do they need to be real communities etc. After spending a bit more time reading the different FOC blogs, there seems to be perhaps a bit of a theme (and maybe someone else has already noted it as well), in that the level of support and community feeling is based around the purpose of the forum- perhaps the community is more apparent in the social forum settings. Perhaps in some of the educational forums, the posts are so few and far between, hence the community feeling is not there at all. I thought of a forum I do belong to, which I rarely use for my own purpose, but I still get all the posts. It is the TANZ Network Support forum for Tutors who work on the Nat.Cert. Business (First Line Management).

Now, it's used as a network more than a group (I think), but it is 'not an open forum', and works across all the TANZ institutions delivering the programme ( support for both Blackboard LMS and Moodle). It is facilitated in a way, in that there is one person/group responsible for all the admin bits, and keeping the content current- and who makes sure that the queries are answered. It used as a technical forum, a way of keeping all the different tutors connected with all the changes on the programme, a way of accessing marking schedules (all the providers are delivering the same programme-all 'online'). It's "the place" to go to for all things to do with the programme. I have always thought it a bit 'dry' and not very receptive to chatting, but recently, I posted a query related on uploading Assignments on Moodle (not for this particular programme, but for a similar one, on Moodle). I was a bit overwhelmed by the responses, and the people who replied were a great support.I got the replies really quickly too. So in terms of the community feel, it sort of seemed to me at the time, that there are people 'out there' who are happy to help and connect, but they are not "there" all the time. If I look at the forums now, they look quite inactive, but I suggest that when the time comes, people are "out there", ready to post!! So the community is acting abit like on an "as needed" basis. perhaps not a really active community but an effective network never-the-less (for me anyway :-))

Discussion Forums-finally a posting

Hi All

Can't believe how quickly this fortnight has gone. I admit, I haven't yet looked at the readings for this topic yet- that will happen this weekend. But I thought I would post this before the meeting tonight.

Heather and I have been talking about this a bit in the office during the week, and we both decided that its actually quite hard to pick just one, as there are so many different types of "presences' online now. And given that we are still getting our own heads around what an online community consists of, and whether the community is a group, or a network, I couldn't help but think of the special 'community' aspect when I was choosing "my forum".
So the forum I set out to research for this topic is the KiwiBiker Forum.



I ride a motorbike and already knew that the forum existed. I have used it for checking out information previously, but I am not a member. I was however, able to talk to a regular member, and we had a good chat about how the forum works. The reason why I thought this would be a good example, is that it has been running since 2002-or 2003. There is already a strong community feeling amongst 'bikers', it's almost a sub-culture, and even if you don't know anyone else who rides a bike, you only need to pull up to a petrol station or cafe and if there are any other bikers there, a conversation will soon start up. I was quite sure then, that the online
forum would show the same sense of community.
The posts are conversational, usually short and to the point, with plenty of 'slang and MTB lingo' used, with a few 'unmentionables' for good measure. A glossary of terms would probably be useful or 'newbies', and in this case, there is probably legitimate reason for 'lurking' so that newbies can get a sense of the culture. Thankfully the site allows this.

After speding some time looking at the forum collections, I could almost be persuaded to say its both a 'network' (open for veiwing, and provides connective information) and a 'group' (closed to non-members for contributing but has boundaries by way of each of the threads being self-limiting, no cross over).

The features that I have looked for here (in an online community) are based on the other blogs and the meeting we had, as follows:

-same interests/purpose
-communicate towards a common objective
-able to gain something by taking away something (shared knowledge, questions answered (in the case of the discussion forums))
-like-minded people
-level of contribution is by choice
-"trust", this can be an issue in terms of can it be built up 'online', and how long does it take???

I was quite impressed with the web site layout, and as a first-timer you are immediately drawn to a FAQ's link, which also lets you know that you may have to register to "post" anything. I discussed with my forum member interviewee the
differences in 'facilitating' and 'moderating' that we as a group have discussed recently, and we both came to the conclusion that this forum (which is actually a collection place of many smaller forums) is 'moderated', rather than 'facilitated', and that the forums are in fact 'self-facilitating'. I mean that the contributors themselves tend to keep an eye on what is happening. The layout of the website tended to help with this. The top of the forum 'home page' starts with the general forum, then as you scroll down the different groups are displayed-
general, motorcycle sub-groups, mechanics, competition etc.
In each section, there is a link to the forum, and a short description, then on
the right hand side of the screen, a link to the latest post, with the number of threads, and the number of posts, the most recent first.
I am amazed at the sheer numbers, and my interveiwee thought that this was one of the longest standing active discussion forum arenas (NZ based only). He goes onto the site every day or so, but doesn't always contribute. He has regular 'forums' that he visits, and follows those more with more interest.

In terms of the features I listed above, this web meeting place is definately a 'community', that uses the services of moderators rather than facilitators. We couldn't see an immediate benefit of have a facilitator present, unless it was
for the section where meetings and events are listed. The events are posted by the moderators, not the members.There is a clear link to the moderators details for each forum. They act as housekeepers, they move posts into more appropriate
collections, they track posts for misleading content (that might put riders in danger for example), and generally keep an eye on things. There is also a website administrator, who ensures that the links are working, and that the registration is working.

In terms of any other benefits of having the services of facilitators, the idea of 'co-ordinated events' appears to already happen, by nature of the different threads starting up, each one a mini-event. My interviewee thought this
'just happened'. But he also thought that if some posts weren't moving along, the moderators "helped out", in which case they may be acting as facilitators :-)!!

It's an open community, membership is voluntary, and you can view the posts without subscribing, but can't "do" anything until you 'register', thus the members are protected in a way, therefore dealing with the trust issue. As a non-member, I cannot click on a link to see someone's details. I suspect that in this type of environment, people who are "flamers" and "timewasters", "show offs" etc would soon get 'moved on'....... or dealt with publically. I get the feeling that mostly, its an environment that is encouraging and supportive, while being razor sharp on current issues.

It seems that most of the participants are males, it's welcoming and well thought out (im my opinion anyway). There is a "forum" for women bikers however.

We also talked about the sheer size of the 'forums'. There is an archive
(restricted to text only, no graphics). However, all the threads are searchable. Again, you have to be a member to do this, thus forcing contribution.

Statistics:
Threads: 102,271, Posts: 2,220,992, Members: 16,451, Active Members: 4,487
WOW- how does that compare to Google Groups ? I don;t know, will have to look I guess.

Hopefully I'll make it online tonight and hear how the rest of you are getting along.

Thanks
Debra

...more

I have just read Stephen's blog and found the following point to note/consider in terms of a facilitator being a member of an (online) group (or is that network ???)-from Nancy White's guide:


Facilitators as Role Models
Facilitators are the most emulated members of a group -- no matter if they are modeling positive or negative behaviors. They are often the first members to be challenged. Integrity, patience, a good sense of humor and a love of other people will be valued in any host. And as virtual communitarian Howard Rheingold so aptly wrote, "One point of heart is worth ten points of intellect."

Sometimes the facilitator is also a "member" of the group. Keep in mind when playing multiple roles in a community that people may not know what role you are "playing" at any one time and react in ways you might not anticipate. Facilitators might see themselves as also "just members" of the community. Members may not. This distinction becomes critical when there is cause for intervention or problem solving. No longer will you be perceived as "just a member." And in some cases, you will never again be considered in that role. You are most often held to a higher standard.



I had just assumed that the Facilitator would be considered to be a member of an online group (or network or community?)- but this suggests otherwise. Already, connotations of the facilitator appear here as the "higher being", therefore the blurring of the role of teacher/facilitator comes to my mind again...and the need for the expectations of each role/part to play to be made clear. More to ponder...