SCoPE Next Steps: August 20 - September 2, 2007

I'm not going to be in here again until next week probably - I'm off to a workshop/meeting, one of those with only 20 or so people.  Harder to hide, will be fun and busy.

SCOPE:
I think this fills a key place in the portfolio of offerings in this field. 

There are several posts around the place in various seminar "Finishing up" threads wondering how to manage afterthoughts.  I have thought of the idea of keeping one forum open per seminar - but now this has grown to 20!! or keeping one forum open with one thread per topic: same problem.

I have thought whether we could choose a small number of themes and keep them as ongoing open forums of the Q&A "I have a question" sort.  In some respects, Google/Delicious/Technorati helps with this now.  BUT there is no substitute for the networking people effect.

This is the problem of scalability.

There are some topics that deserve a re-visit.

Also: social chat and just musing.  Where do we do this?  One answer is the various blogs that have spawned.  But there may be technological gizmos to help with this.  We have the problems of scale here . . .

I like being here because I have NO responsibilities.  I can just dip in when I want to.  I have no responsibility to Make Things Happen, facilitate, etc - just to be a good citizen.  There are a lot of lurkers - I know this because I meet them sometimes.  This is good.  But can we draw them in in some way?  Should we try?

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We are not quite a 'user community' but Kath Sierra's post has some interesting wisdom

How to Build a User Community, Part 1

Most user communities take a typical path--the newbies ask questions, and a select group of more advanced users answer them. But that's a slow path to building the community, and it leaves a huge gaping hole in the middle where most users drop out. If we want to keep beginning and intermediate users more engaged (and increase the pool of question answerers), we need them to shift from asker to answerer much earlier in their learning curve. But that leaves two big questions... 1) How do we motivate them? 2) How do we keep them from giving lame answers?

Actually, this isn't the biggest problem with most user communities. The real deal-killer is when a new or beginning user asks a "dumb" question. Most supportive, thriving user communities have a culture that encourages users to ask questions, usually through brute-force moderation with a low-to-no-tolerance policy on ridiculing a question. In other words, by forcing participants to "be reasonably nice to newbies", beginners feel safe posing questions without having to start each one with, "I know this is probably a dumb question, but..." <snip>

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I think my question for you Sylvia includes this:
What are your goals?  (I mean the sponsors etc) - Why did you set this up?  Behind the scenes: what oils the wheels?

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And my final comment is this:  I'm not too worried about anything here!!  It's been a great time.  We don't need to get too immersed in analysis or postmodern co-construction of ideas about the future.  But a little bit of this may help.  Charles Handy (The Empty Raincoat) talks about the sigmoid curve, and the inevitable decline, and the benefits of catching this when all indicators are that everything is well.
Here are the other types of questions:

1. Are we including newcomers as best as we can?
2. Are we web 2.0 enough?
   
3. Are we keeping up with the times?
4. Who is we?
   

Sylvia: I hope the canoeing is good at the moment.

-Derek

Sylvia, as always, you are doing a wonderful job shepherding us along!

I liked Derek's response and suggestions. I agree we should explore web 2.0 more, and would love to see a meetup feature, perhaps like a board or list of conferences or events where people could see who is planning to attend where, so if face-to-face is possible, let's encourage it. This reminds me when I met you at Northern Voice--it added a wonderful new direction for this. I also liked Derek's question about learning a little more about the sponsors of this site itself and what objectives exist for it.

Finally, I am interested in evaluation of educational technology and social netoworking. How can we determine if objectives are met, and what does success look like for technology integration into education.

I am really glad I am involved in this site and community.

I hadn't visited SCoPE recently because of the joys of summer, including partaking of your amazing hospitality, Sylvia, but an email showed up in my box yesterday to remind me to get back to it.

I'm with Derek on wanting to explore more 2.0 tools and issues, but I've spent the past 24 hours thinking about Jennifer Wagner's blog post about getting beyond preaching to the converted. How do we reach educators who aren't part of our conversation? How do we convince them to get beyond the "I don't have the time" and other such reasons for resistance to using technology with their learners? (I may be volunteering to facilitate with this one).

And Derek, I really miss Kathy Sierra's posts.

Thanks, Sylvia.  I enjoy seeing what is being discussed on SCoPE, but have had limited time to participate.  The 'next steps' posts all sounds good.  Along similar lines, discussions that would be helpful for me are those that blend technology with teaching practice, particularly where it concerns applying and evaluating Web 2.0 tools--perhaps testimonials from both the giving and receiving ends and suggested next steps, keeping IT smiling when planning to roll out these tools (potential impacts for them) and some best practices.  <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

I am not a regular participant; I think I wandered in here via a Moodle Canada conference a while ago, but here is my two cents...I was drawn in by the seminar on creating online dialogue, which was excellent. I am sorry I missed the earlier one on facilitation, as that one looked very interesting also. I work with both educational and other organizational (government, non-profit, foundations, etc) online CoPs. I support (coach) facilitators, set up the sites, kind of do Sylvia's job in some respects, so topics that relate to dialogue and facilitation interest me.

I think this community is very well organized. It is usually pretty easy to get to where I try to get to and the topics are good and I have discovered some good resources here. So, thanks, and thanks for having it open to outsiders like myself!

It would be nice to have a central review point (or forum) in SCoPE where all of us could post reviews on certain web 2.0 features. The last one I made was on microblogging systems

the same could be done with Web2.0 software we use. Anol, a friend of mine posts his latest del.icio.us links on his twitter, on a fixed basis he sends them around, which allows others to quickly check out what is happening and whether or not that is useful. This kind of twitter thing: the scopeTwitter could be usefull.

@facebook or other: is there a facebook group of SCoPE? I did find a group: summer camp opportunities provide edge... but that did not seem the right group (:  That way we can all join in that group.

@event calendar: that would be such a good feature. Networking would be really easy.

Hi Sylvia and everyone else who is on this forum:

I always find something new and fresh when I on SCOPE. There's also a lot of enthusiasm, info-sharing and ideas from the community...

And thanks to Sylvia and others for keeping this happening!

Cheers
Wai-Leng

I prefer the Ning interface to Facebook for Professional Community building. If you aren't familiar with Ning, go to http://college2.ning.com/profile/DeirdreB.