As I mentioned earlier this week, I just registered for another online class, Facilitating Online Communities.

I really like how Leigh Blackall, the facilitator for the class, has listed the assignments and is being more than patient with the flurry of email that is moving around from the course Google Group.

The assignments for the first week are:

1. Set up a blog to record the course notes. Done–I already have my own blog and will use it for this course as well as for my other work.
2. Listen to the recording for the first week. Not done yet; I have trouble focusing on something like this, and it may be one of the reasons I do not listen to podcasts too often as well. I listen to the radio all the time, but it usually becomes background noise. Thus, my challenge–how to make background noise into something I have to consciously focus on. Will have to try to do this.
3. Post here what I hope to get from this course. OK; here goes. I hope to learn more about online communities and how best to facilitate them. I have recently started to get active in CPsquare as I find a lot of value in collaborating with people who have different perspectives (due to the international audience and variety of experiences and education) from me in the areas of technology and adult learning. I am hoping that this class, which stretches for several months well into the Fall (in the US, at least) will give me ideas and encourage me to try new things with my online and F2F classes I teach. I am wondering how to apply the research, work, and experience from the communities of practice to higher education classes. I try to teach in a democratic manner, and am wondering how students may be encouraged to learn differently from this perspective. I hope Leigh’s class will help me think this through.
4. Introduce myself on the course discussion page. Done. Additionally, I just added my blog to my post there.
5. Set up an RSS blog reader, and subscribe to the blog posts of those in the class. Well, I use FeedDemon, which is an offline reader that synchs online (so I can access the same feeds home and at work).  I like having these things offline, but there has been so much talk about Google Reader, that perhaps I should check that one out as well. My question here is how to get all the RSS feeds for the class? Some people have tried to do this with various tools, but all the lists appear inconsistent. Will have to consider this on my own I suppose.

Let me speak for a moment on my first impressions. Leigh has done a tremendous amount of preparation for this class. Kudos to him! It does seem, however, that some of the students have started a flurry of discussion about tools and technology and the like–so much that I am already having trouble keeping up. Now, I am an instructional designer, university adjunct faculty member who teaches in and with technology, and do consider myself somewhat conversant in using technology; yet I am still struggling to keep up with all the emails that are discussing tools and such. I do, however, think it is very valuable to have this conversation, and am always happy to have (and sometimes be one of the) students who have passion and try to share it with others for the betterment of the entire experience. We need passionate people who want to share! My concern is for those who are not as fluent in the tools already and who may be a bit overwhelmed with hearing and seeing too much at once (namely, by day 3!). Interesting experience as I do not normally feel like one of them.

Nevertheless, we are off to a wonderful start, and I only hope that this passion remains and develops! 

Wonderful news that the updated CPsquare website is up and running, now on a new and improved WordPress platform. There are even working RSS feeds there, so if you have not been to their website recently (or better stated, our website (as I am a member!)), go and take a look. Running on a blogging foundation, there should now me more regular posts and adjustments on the front page.

Let’s see how the community of practice uses its new community website!

I just learned from my colleague Sylvia Currie at SCoPE that there is a new, online class that begins today–Facilitating Online Communities. Facilitated by Leigh Blackall at Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand, this seems like another of the intersting summer learning experiences to be aimed at a global audience of community facilitators and educators.

I just signed up for it, and am looking forward to several weeks of learning and meeting new colleagues. I am thinking more and more about a class as a virtual community of practice, and am hoping to learn some ways to integrate this into my online teaching, especially my upcoming Principles and Practices of Online Course Creation and Instructional Design course and the online graduate courses I will teach thereafter.

It is turning into a busy summer of online educational technology and online community book discussions. The copy of Curtis Bonk and Ke Zhang’s new text, Empowering Online Learning: 100+ Activities for Reading, Reflecting, Displaying, and Doing, just arrived. Curt blogged about his book, and I am looking forward to beginning the discussion at SCoPE.

As Curt explains in the text, R2D2 in his work stands for Read, Reflect, Display, and Do. I have heard some colleagues mention concepts such as this, and my interest as an instructor and instructional designer is peaked. It seems the book is oriented toward higher and adult education, so this should fit. I am looking forward to learning a lot here!

Did I mention that this book discussion is free to join? SCoPE is a wonderful community that Sylvia Currie coordinates, and is well worth getting to know if you have any involvement at all in educational community and practice as supported through technology.

Interested in an online summer book discussion about communities of practice? If so, you may want to check out the one hosted and facilitated by CPsquare, the community of practice on communities of practice.

We will be reading and discussing selected chapters from the 2-volume Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators, edited by Chris Kimble and Paul Hildreth. The books are not the easiest to locate, and the cheapest (and quickest) place to order is directly through the publisher (use this great discount for the pair that somebody found), which is where I got mine. To bad they are not both available via Amazon (odd, really, I think).

The event is free for members of CPsquare; otherwise it is $50 for non-members who will have to register here.

Let’s see what we can learn together this summer about communities of practice.

A colleague accused me (or rather busted me, to use her words!) of mulitasking during one of our Connected Futures CP2tech01 field trips, to which I responded that multitasking is more about “working to capacity.” I like framing mulitasking in that way better - mulititasking is working to capacity!

Of course, work and capacity are both words that can be defined in many different ways. Ask any mother, student, knowledge worker, or community of practice technology steward!

I have been Tweeting and posting on the various pages for the Connected Futures workshop much more than I have been blogging in the past few days. I suppose I have had more to say than I have had time to say it.

As one of our workshop expectations is to create a blog post reflecting on our first week, I think that what is strongest on my mind is how much I realize I want to learn more about the topics though, while somewhat disoriented from the amount of discussion and buzz and new tools and co-participants, I am not feeling overwhelmed. John and Bronwyn are both experts at facilitating and leading communities of practice, and they are doing a wonderful job juggling all the demands of this active adult professional audience, so much that they are setting a feeling of calm over the workshop. It feels safe to be disoriented, as that is where so much rich learning can occur, without making or allowing for feeling stupid or inferior. How they manage to remain composed while still answering lots of emails and posts (with one or two of them my own . . .) demonstrates, or rather role-models, what I think those of us who facilitate communities of practice should strive for. I mentioned this during our Monday afternoon teleconference check-in, and was happy that Etienne Wenger, one of our workshop colleagues, mentioned that he was happy this was the sense that has been actively conveyed. I hope my colleagues feel this as well.

Strange, as learning is often so content-focused (cf. learning objectives), that here I am learning how to just BE–and in the process to be open to learn more than any book or slide deck can teach. What possibilities when we can just allow our students to sit and process all the busyness involved in learning.

I found a new use of Twitter–quickly connect to an entire community.

Well, I did not necessarily discover this on my own, as it has been a recent topic of discussion on one of the discussion groups I follow, Online Facilitation. One of the members of the group sent a Twitter follow request / email invitation to the mailing list itself, which in effect invited anybody and everybody in the community to click the link to then follow this person via Twitter.

Brilliant idea, I thought–how better to communicate with a group of people with similar interests than by sending a Twitter invite to the entire group! If we share this interest in online facilitation, as I thought about it, then perhaps sending this sort of Tweet to everybody in the group may in fact move the communication to a more public area (Twitter) , where people can continue to connect in another forum. Isn’t this what facilitating community is all about?

However, the issue of this being discussion board spam or an accident has also been raised. Here, I thought it was a brilliant community outreach (there are many people on the list I do not know nor have I ever met or seen) that tried to bring people together, while others perceived a similar outreach as more discussion group clutter. I know I usually do not actively seek people out on Twitter or any of the other social media (a bit shy, fear of rejection, or desire to be unobtrusive?), so when I get these invitations from others who have some similar interests, I am usually appreciative of their efforts.  That this came in a spam-like blanket that does not offer any immediate benefit for the current community (Twitter conversations would, of course, occur outside the current community) is also a very real concern. This is like sending donation emails, self-promotion communications, or even adverts to a discussion group, most of which are frowned upon. What surprised me the most was how little discussion this really did generate at all. 

That once again Twitter (I Tweet here, by the way) is used in an unintended way that sparks discussions that previously did not exist is a testament to how significant I really believe this technology to be.

What do you think?

I am really looking forward to attending the online Connected Futures (cp2tech01) Workshop that begins today.

Sponsored by CPSquare, the Community of Practice on Communities of Practice, John Smith and Bronwyn Stuckey have been doing all of the visible pre-work for the workshop. The workshop leaders include Beth Kanter(who I have spoken to numerous times online, but never in this context), Beverly Trayner, Bronwyn Stuckey (who I finally met a couple weeks back while she was visiting NYC), Etienne Wenger(who I read 2 graduate degrees ago as a former professor was fond of his work), John Smith (who laughs more heartily than his screen shot avatar indicates), Nancy White (who I also took an online class with and met and worshipped twice while at Northern Voice), Nick Noakes(who I have read but have never met), Shawn Callahan, Shirley Williams, and Susanne Nyrop.

I will be focused on this workshop for the next five weeks (while I am not working, finishing a most interesting class I am teaching, Project Management for Training, and preparing for a graduate Leadership course I am teaching). What is most interesting is that I have been increasingly looking forward to this class, even more than I thought I would be. Good sign.

We are having our opening teleconference call this afternoon, and one of the questions we were asked to consider is: “What brings you to this workshop?” Simple question to be sure, but one that I have the most trouble answering because there are many reasons. I want to learn from this group of experts. I want to increase my experiences because I find myself drawn to this area. I am looking to continue even more higher education, and think this may help me grok some additional distance possibilities than I previously considered. I want to consider ways to bring this into my teaching. I want to consider expanding some of my professional opportunities with consulting and my full-time work. I hope to get some new research ideas and perhaps additional research partners. I want to be exposed to the people pushing this field along. I want to be involved at this point where this is starting to become more of a field at all. These are just to name a few, and as a reflective practitioner, there will undoubtedly be additional ones as I further consider this today.

Now, we need to consider creating a logo for this workshop . . .

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