Category Archives: Communities

Learning Communities, Communities of Practice, Professional Learning Communities. From the members point of view mainly – and leadership/hosting of such entities to growth, sustainability and synergy.

April in Christchurch

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I’m back on the blogging wagon.  For now.  I’ve been playing a bit over on Facebook.  Keeping up with Jeffery Keefer (Who has been working on research proposals and buying a portable bike), Sean Callaghan (writing a fascinating article on story telling, I just wish the powers that be would get this) – plus a bit of fun (VOCA people), although only posts and pictures and comment (Not really interested in tossing sheep, cats or womans weekly like quizzes) (sofar, anyway).

Why no posts?

I’ve just been too fragmented again I think.  Usual story.

Moodle has taken more of an effort than I thought.  Just working on a third draft of my workshop reference manual.  Comments welcome.  Edition III coming out sometime soon.

Then there is the professional development/reflective practice sessions with the Bangladeshi group.  What is a good model for Professional Development for teachers? What works here, will it work there?  Does it work here?  What is “work”?

Read this (actually on management) and ask What is a good teacher?

There’s a misbegotten conceptual blunder in all this. We think we can reduce the complexity of business acumen and leadership (read teaching)  to something that is actually at a much deeper level of both personal and organizational understanding. It’s not that we shouldn’t try to articulate how to improve, but to confuse that with a promise, particularly a scientifically verifiable promise, is simply naive. This is not, to my mind, terribly different than the employee, not doing his/her job, who complains: “just tell me what to do!” And if you can’t tell me, then you are a hoax. So we do the best we can to offer the expertise, and voila, we are found out. We took the bait of hubris.
We skimmed over the section that said there are no absolute answers. We skimmed over the section that said we don’t know. The answer to this MAYBE is a community. One where we talk about the real stuff that’s going on in our firms (Schools) and in ourselves. Seems like, from time to time, that might create a breakthrough. (Actually from Bob Sutton)

And: John Hattie’s book: Blog post from PPTA | The Ethical Teacher |Invisible learning A ‘sympathetic critique” (More on this later maybe)

“Evidence does not supply us with rules for action but only with hypotheses for intelligent problem solving, and for making inquiries about our ends in education.”(John Dewey).

Educational Research?  Three fronts:

  1. Peter Coolbear’s talk at the Higher Education Summit. (Available here: akoaotearoa.ac.nz/ako-aotearoa/ako-aotearoa/resources/pages/enhancing-value-and-impact-research-vocational-education-a) (There’s a link for you!!) Looks at the value of different tyes of research.  This idea has been on Wikipedia since December last year.
    stokesquadrantcolour
  2. The Moodle Hub at UC: for research related to Moodle (now called here LEARN)
  3. My personal interests.  Pondering the concept of “Evidence Based”.  One of my heros (Jim Collins) has come in for some drubbing – See Bob Sutton. Can you actually find out things by interviewing success stories? More later – and the thoughts from above on John Hattie’s book.

I’ve applied for funding to go to The OpenED conference and the FLNW ’09 event.
And I’ve reconnected with SCoPE.  They have done something to their e-mail there, and whoa!! suddenly I’m getting e-mails again.

Supporting a community online: the Platform

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What are the minimum requirements for software to support a community? In some respects this will depend on the scale, and the engagement of the members, ther longevity desired, the traffic etc.

I’ve been thinking about this hard with the launch of Ako Aoteraroa. I think my irreducible minimum functionality would include these functions:

Admin Functions:

  1. Roles. The ability to give members extra rights to become administrators in some sense.
    At least three roles: Owner, Admin, Members.
  2. Easy communication: with group members, as groups of individuals.
    There needs to be a way for a person with admin rights to click a link to send a copy of a post to everyone’s email – routine admin posts, news of special events etc.  Used sparingly.
  3. Power: The ability to ban members, delete and hide posts. The ability to moderate: and maybe to moderate some individuals.
  4. News/calendar functionality

Member Functions

  1. Joining: a self signup process, with a confirmation process of e-mails (etc)
  2. A forum. There has been a lot of debate over flat or nested (threaded) discussions. I think the answer is both are needed with a button to switch between views.
    An added bonus is the ability to split a thread to take a post, and all the replies linked to that post, and split it off into a separate thread.
  3. Notifications of posts: with individual control.
  4. Posting: Edit your own posts for a while. Pictures in posts.
  5. A members list and profiles and (maybe) some individual public history.  Identity management: some sort of way for individuals to manage who they are in relation to the community: maybe a place to linked to the blog or homepage, or a place they can record a brief profile, and maybe a record there of posts made.
    In essence they should be able to find each other and be found.
  6. File Sharing: it’s vital that there be some ability to upload an annotated copy of a file.
    Ideally there would be search functionality if files get too many.
  7. A great text editor with the ability to handle images, media, links and formatting easily.

Nice: chat/messaging, voting thingy, wiki.

Site functions

A public home page and optinmal other public pages.

Some options:

  1. Groupserver (Dan Randow, Christchurch, New Zelaland)
  2. Webcrossing (This is the software behind CP2)
  3. Moodle.  (Not a community support application, but has lots of functionality)
  4. Google groups.  Google groups has a lot of this functionality.

Leigh’s suggestion is to give up on any proprietary or even installable Open source options and see if Google can be persuaded to being in the remaining desired functionality.

This is a simple first pass list.  There are a lot of other subtlies.  And a lot of other software options (Just do a search – pretty well once a week I hear of a new application – Dolphin was the latest).  And a lot of other lists as well. May post sometime.

Random Links: Nancy’s Forum Link: About Forums (On wikispaces, you may have to join)

Reflections from my first serious online event

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BuildingabstractToday I got rid of 400 or so folders, organised a GIG of files and proceeded one more step along the road to having my files sorted, which at the moment are over 40 GIG, down from 100.  I discovered an old report I wrote on my first serious online workshop, written in week 2-3 of the 6 weeks.  Quotes/extracts follow and with some reflections in Green.

A report and some reflections (about 6 years ago)

I had two goals in taking part in this workshop.  Besides finding out more about (stuff) from the content and ideas, I was also interested in an immersion experience, and to find out much more about myself in the online environment.

There is quite a comprehensive document that describes the structure of the workshop, but in actual fact much more unfolded as the weeks progress(ed).

In actual fact: nothing in mere written form could have prepared me for the roller coaster ride to come – and some of what was there, I didn’t believe.

The first week, was in typical Gilly Salmon stage one mode, – icebreaking, when we played an absolutely marvellous game which I won’t spoil by commenting on.

I’ve since come to collect ideas for icebreakers.  The best ones actually work even if you have ‘done them’ before, and help stretch while getting used to the toys we play with.

I was absolutely astounded by how quickly I found a sense of comradeship and online connection emerging.

(Facilitator) has these little phrases, many of them metaphoric which he uses at times, not so much to answer questions, but to help shape the discussion.

Metaphor is powerful online.
Shaping is a considered term here: not firect, not close off . . .

The second week, we were put into two groups, where basically we were to share ideas, theories and information about being on line.

I was assigned the group.  I often wondered if I was placed intentionally by some deeply thoughtful process, randomly assigned or just matched up on some basis like timezone.
We could visit thje other group, but not post.
But people commented in their group on posts made in the other group.
Like a couple of group blogs really.

(Facilitator) was responsible for this, and he heavily fascilitated, but again with a quite remarkable tone and voice to his posts.

I later discovered the ideas of voice, and our online persona in some of the literature.

What have I learned -

Webairportpicture(snip – bits removed here . . . ) Another aspect that has probably been my third significant transcendent experience, has been a growing awareness of the power of story.  The richness of even a few paragraphs of description, has contributed a lot to the whole tone of this workshop.

Absolutely critical.  Along with metaphor, images and poetry.  But within limits.  Insights from a case study of one need to be carefully filtered.  “I used Flickr and it was crap”  Determining a form of truth from experience is to be treated carefully.
But somehow story unlocks.

Another thing that has interested me is how much it has affected me emotionally.

The keenness to get online, the anxious wait for a response to my post, my question or my suggestion. . .
I also had three seriously rugged experieinces in this workshop, and I cringed for months when I recalled these.  Even the best faciltiation and good structure could not prevent this.
Resilience is needed online at times.

THAT’S IT -I think I had a second report from later, but it is unfindable at the moment.

My take on Communities

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I’m a little tired.  Two nights out with the kids, Music with Mark at Burnside High School (where we made over $90 in the 15 minute interval selling drink and chips) and Drama/dance with Anna.  I was so tired last night I probablyu could have fallen asleep.  And my wrists are playing up a little.  But I did drift away in my thoughts last night and decided I do have a little to say about community.

Homework

The homework for this week: «Write a post to your blog with your thoughts about the meaning of an online community and its uses. Include a list of identifying features that YOU would look for when assessing an online group or network for features which make it a community»

Community is about people.  With a cause.  [eg Educational designer, Clinicalhealth education, Media studies teachers, Non-hodgekinsone lymphona sufferers, waste water engineers] Dare I say some passion and care.  Care for the cause and for other people.  They need some level of shared experience, history, trust and/or understanding.

Here it immmediatley becomes complex.  Poor understanding can be balanced by some good shared experieince – understanding emerges, or can emerge.  A high level of understanding can make up for lack of shared experieinces and help trust grow.

I think there needs to be some sort of core group: formally or informally recognised.  I often prefer the word leadership rather than facilitation.  But a particular type of leadership: frunction (ie what they do) rather than status (ie it’s Not a power thing).  Leadership by influence.  Greenleafs Servant Leadership one model I warm to.  Or the notion of distributed leadership.  On the other hand a strong individual with the right habits and attitudes can also have the nurturing emergent effect needed in a community – as opposed to a team (with it’s boundedness and task oriented nature.

Again it is complex: weak leadership can be made up for with other factors – like shared care.  leadership trying to come in from outside and shape direction for external agendas can kill off a budding wannabe community.

Merrolee Penman coined the term “Community with Amnesia” in her peripheral participation in an online workshop in 2004.  ‘They have the seeds of community, but don’t know it’.  I remember raising the existential question with her: Is a coward a coward before they do a cowardly act?  Is a community a community before they do a community act?  Mere potential is not enough for me.

Dysfunction can set in when levels of trust + shared experieince + caring + passion + care + focus + vision (etc) add up to less than a critical mass.  [But a level of tension and debate is also needed to prevent communities from atrophying, imploding, withering.]

This is my cylinder theory, I’ve never put on the net: the cylinder of function can be filled up with lots of different inputs – - – I may come back to this.

I have seen a teacher switch schools and see a difference in community feel that is like night and day.

Here is recent news (headline news here yesterday) of the funding body/sponsor for one community I have been involved with:

From Aug 4th 2008:  The West Coast Development Trust is so dysfunctional and divided that it can not be trusted to do its job in delivering economic benefits to the region, the auditor-general said today.

The trust was set up to administer $92 million of $120 million funding package given to the West Coast in compensation after it banned the logging of native forests.

The auditor-general’s report released today paints a picture of trustees infighting with allegations of corruption being thrown around and counter-allegations of leaking confidential information.

The auditor-general said the situation was so serious that trustees should sort it out immediately or just stand down.

“Unlike other public entities with elected board, there is no other ready mechanism for resolving this level of dysfunction,” the report said.

“Until we see evidence that the group of trustees is able to take effective collective responsibility for the governance of the trust, we are unable to provide assurance that the trust is able to deliver fully on its purpose of generating sustainable employment opportunities and economic benefits for the people of the West Coast.”

National Business Review

Lastly (for now) there is the concept of membership and identity.  Who can join?  If I show up will I be accepted?  If I bring in screwy ideas, what will happen?  If I turn up with an agenda, ditto?

I have tremedously benefitted from community like entities over my entire professional life.  I have had a lot of fun.  I have seen (unfortunately) more than my share of bullying, manipulation and crassness.  But: I have not given up yet.

The online/virtual bit?

Communities exist [or not] and the online supports them.  How, tech problems etc is a whole other matter.  Someone else can write on this.

How do we recognise a [healthy] community?

I think from the people, that they have some sense of identity that they carry with them that allows them to be better stronger as individuals than if they were on their own.  Both a sense of their own identity and their identity as part of a group.  Are they better in their cause for being part of the group?  Is there nurture and care, both of the person and the cause.

Robert Greenleaf said this: “Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?” (You can Google to find the ref)

How do we recognise a dysfunctional/dying withering comunity?

You get the idea.  I’ll only write on this if I really need to.

Refs: you will recognise elements of Etienne’s forumlation here (Domain, Community, Practice, CoP), and Amy Kim, and Nancy White etc etc.

Blog meandering in FOC08

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Diane Holmes has coined a new word: blogbleary.  I think I felt that way a little last night.  Just getting the feel for a few of the FOC08 blogs.

Greg Barcelon has quite a nice post on his ideas on networks > groups > teams > communities.  He also references the superb little summary at Cheryl’s Blog on virtual communities.

For the second time in two days I had to dictionary.com a blog name.  The insouciant Existentialist – “marked by blithe unconcern” – sxyshandy.vox.com/ Trying to post a comment they asked me to join Vox.  (I already am, from some distant past activity) it was just too much for me.  A comment I would have added to the insouciant existentialist

and (you say) inject some structure in nurturing online communities
Is this a good thing?
Is it possible?

I notice in valerie’s Blog valerie.posterous.com/herding-cats she refers to working with communities as herding cats. I am sure there is another blog in the FOC08 list with this in the title, but in my blog surfing I have lost it.

Structure?? .

Lurking.  Deb has commented on Shane’s post.  I do not see Lurking as a problem, but if we all did it . .  I vividly remember my first online class where I was there as a helper to the lecturer.  Met someone in the loos.  They said “I have said things online I never wojuld have said F2F” and “I like having time to think”

Now I think enough. Blogbleary – but stimulated.  Interested to note there were two longer, deeper posts that I just cannot engage with yet – better a serious read after a morning coffee.

What do I want to know?

Some of the questions

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Wednesday’s post

[I'm sorry to my three regular readers to divert a little into Facilitating Online Communities course comment]

The questions – some of the big and some of the small

Blogs or forums?

Do I go back into facebook?

From Peter: I have no experience with Diigo rooms,  and I don’t know how many do. I was wondering earlier about setting up a FOC08 group on Facebook, but again, don’t know if anyone is on there, and if Diigo is fine then I don’t see any reason to clutter the space and fragment the info.

I think for me the answer is no.

Todays antisocial networking posts via e-mint :  I called but I don’t want to speak | The antisocial network

Are we in any shape or form a community?

One of the things I find fascinating, especially as we go into this next week of study, is the ambiguity or “play” between us as a group of people doing an online course on facilitating online community, and us as a potential (some might say budding) online community ourselves. I certainly find a close relationship in my own work between facilitating and nurturing/developing/“building” online community and for me this question gives context to all the others that have come up for us so far. Amy

Quoting . .  and managing the flow of information.

Netvibes. What a cool job Joao has done. When I saw this page I knew: the tsunami of ideas and thought (and thoughtlets) has hit.

Who am I?

The official question

What is community? This is of course the question of the week.  It’s like the judge said when asked to define Porn: “I know it when I see it”

One response that says a lot: knowmansland.com/learningpath/?p=126 Well done Cristina Costa

George and Stephen’s course

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CoffeeblogThis is a must.  From two individuals espousing the benefits of networked, connected “Free-range” learning, a thing they call a course.

The course – Connectivism and Connective Knowledge – (the wiki is here) will be delivered fully online with a combination of synchronous and asynchronous interaction. Participants who have enrolled in the course will receive feedback on assignments and course work and will receive credit for their work. We are in the planning stages of what will become a Certificate in Emerging Learning Technologies (slated for delivery in January, 2009). Connectivism and Connective Knowledge will count as credit in that program. ltc.umanitoba.ca:83/connectivism/?p=15

Read the post: they are taking on some of the critical issues around learning for learning’s sake and learning for credit.

In summary:

  • If learning materials are freely available, what are learners paying for when they take courses? Are they paying for credit?
  • What is the nature of large scale learning experiences? What is the value created?
  • What kinds of technologies should we use? To what degree are we fully distributed?
  • How can we involve participants before and after the course?

This is cool.

I had tea yesterday with a friend who has a wife studying at an institution I have had a lot to do with.  My friend has described a litany of loose ends and sad experieinces with learning over the months, and his wife has in his words “figured out what she needs to do to pass and is engaged in doing it”. Sad.

I’m signed up for this course.  If we can call it that.  I expect to have a challenging and stimulating time, and sort out a few of my ideas further, and have some fun.  If anyone is interested in a New Zealand – or a Christchurch Learning Cell around this course – please contact me.  I’ve also advertised on the DEANZ blog.

More later . . .

Community Platforms

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Just had an e-mail from some of my buddies at cpsquare announcing a January workshop on Community Platforms.  Great Idea.  I’ve been mulling around possible futures for Interact – maybe spin it off as a slightly narrowed aim (not have to worry about all the quiz, gradebook stuff, and concentrate on core business: learning community support).  Still thinking about Moodle as a platform.  It is true: “Community needs a place”.  Why are we taking soi long to get our online platforms sorted?

Dan Randow made a passing comment last week:

Why don’t you just take on a community support role for Interact, and leave the development to others?  Just make sure you have the role of code management sorted somewhere (ie what becomes part of the codebase). . ?

This was a new thought to me.  There is one guy who has said he’s be interested in a role in working with Interact.  I actually have little idea of what the interest is out there – I think there is a need for something.

Today Marilyn Leask passed on this link: www.communities.idea.gov.uk/home.do

Cop Image Home

 ”You can apply for your own workspace on www.communities.idea.gov.uk if you are working with a group to support local governnmet improvement ie work in schools and local authorities and communities. If you are not employed in local government then it would help to get a sponsor.

Yet another community platform, quite a nice experieince logging in, (Yet Another Username And Password @#$%).

The Darkside of Communities

On another matter: institutions have a life of their own.  Set up a project, kill off a community.  Sad.  Communities need to be “for the communities”.

ControversyWe helped start a blog with an academic group last semester.  One person in particular posted some neat stuff, even with 70 posts tagged controversy.  He must have done something wrong.  The blog owner (or at least the one with admin powers) dropped by in and no iffs or buts: deleted every post.

It’s hard not to feel “What did we do wrong in our work with these guys?”  Always a danger with institutional blogs etc.

I wonder what the moral of the story is?

Catching up with the crowd: Networks & Communities

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I even took part in the event last year ::FLNW:: but I had not really taken part in the Network vs Community vs Group conversations. Didn’t feel the need. Didn’t see the point. I think I will need to face this soon however.

SO: Marshalling some references.

Social Networks vs Online Communities. David Coleman

Often the terms “network” and “community” are used interchangably, but they are not the same. The best definition that differentiates the two comes from Amy Jo Kim (author of Community Building on the Web):

A network is composed of loose ties, often the focus is on a topic or particular type of content or behavior. A community may have the same focus but the ties are stronger. No one misses you in a network; they might if you’re a popular and vocal member of a community.

Thus a community is based on fairly intense interactions between its members, while a network is not. According to Ross Mayfield, the founder and CEO of Socialtext, communities are:

  • Top-down
  • Place-centric
  • Moderator controlled **
  • Topic driven
  • Centralized **
  • Architected

While Networks are:

  • Bottom-up
  • People-centric
  • User controlled
  • Decentralized
  • Context driven
  • Self-organizing

**NOTE: Moderator ‘controlled’/Centralised are NOT givens, but I do believe community needs a place.

Amy Jo Kim again. Her Nine Principles. Definitly NOT a network thing.
=I read a lot of this book while at Bronwyn’s place recently. It is surprisingly prescient. Amazingly so.

Lizzie Jackson. “Online communities and social networks are very different, the first offers a sense of place, the other is not a place but a kind of group consciousness grown from comments, images, addresses, photos, and appointments to do something or be somewhere (whether real or virtual). <snip>Social Networks are largely managed or organised by the user-interface in tandem with the content posted into the network”.
=Clarification. All Networks are not Social Networks.

Mark Nichol’s comment on Stanley’s Blog. “Perhaps it might be more accurate to suggest that the role of the teacher solely as transmitter of knowledge is subsumed into more of a holistic role, as a high-status member of a *network* made up of ontological equals. True, we are all equal – but we are not all the same”.

Plus there is Leigh there also: “This networked communication is different to what many of us are used to, and different to what the majority of us experience. But it is significant. It is this form of communication – with all its promise of equality, democracy, and other egalitarian principles”
=Hmm. Leadership, roles, hegemony.

Networked learning. networkedlearning.wikispaces.com/
=Not looked here much.

What about tools? In some respects this is also an issue that impacts: Blogs vs Forums, the impact of blogs and wikis on community practice. Nancy White’s article is significant and worth a read. I’m worried if there were ONLY blogs and wikis and not closed forums some could not make the leap. We need the closed home space, the ‘kitchen/parlour’ metaphor of cpSquare. And we need the free range feeding grounds in formal taught courses, or graduates will emerge with their wings atrophied.

Something new has happened, something in our minds and habits and attitudes.

Things I want to consider:

  • Roles: moderation vs facilitation vs leadership (Teaching??)
  • Modes: Open/closed
  • Care and nurture: Will anyone care for you in a network? Where does care come from? Where is someone to love outside communities.
  • Take some case studies: What is Nancy White’s Online Facilitation list? What is CPSquare? What is TALO/FLNW? What is a typical Facebook group? The group behind WikiHow?
  • To have a place or not? To NEED a place or not?
  • Language.
  • Membership and Identity.

SCoPE forums & Facebook & cpSquare community

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Communication channels proliferate.

In the last month or so, first cpSquare created an outpost group in Facebook, and now SCoPE.  There is a conversation in cpSquare about Dave Snowden’s quote:

Dave Snowden recently said to Etienne Wenger “If knowledge management had had the tools we have today it would not have needed communities of practice” (I paraphrase).  (Reported by Bronwyn Stuckey)

And talk in SCoPE Facebook about e-mail (GMail) vs forums (specifically Moodle) vs Facebook vs Skype for communication (The topic of blogs has not come up yet).  We keep on getting back to habits and tools.