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?

---

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>

---

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?

---

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

Vivian, this has been good.

I've followed your blog, and rationed myself to following up a few links on quals for lecturers - and also the creativity theme.  This is where my interest lies: getting our TLC into creativity and imagination as well as (the also important) tikky boxes and compliance issues.
A challenge indeed!!

Many thanks Vivian.

-Derek

It's now the 24th June here, the last day for this seminar: I realise the sunrise will take a time to reach a number of you guys.

I leave town in a few hours and will likely be without e-mail for about 30 hours.  Got three days away from the campus to meet with friends and do some fun things (hopefully) at efest, a conference in Wellington.

Some interesting, wide-ranging and challenging posts.  Also, as is usual at the end of a seminar, some loose ends, some unfollowed up links, some pending thoughts, remaining questions - but that's all part of being online.

Thanks for all your posts - Derek

Nancy,
We are at this point in our university here.  I am going to have to compromise in some respects. 

Check out openacademic.org

Here is the blurb and the vision:

Welcome to OpenAcademic.

OpenAcademic -- supporting learners, teachers, and institutions.

Create an intranet. Blog. Podcast. Manage the school website, and all
the club websites. Create a private workspace. Manage a class. Share files. Give
students the tools to build portfolios that cross academic years and
curricular disciplines. Support teacher professional development.
Communicate with parents. Build a safe social networking environment
within your school community.

OpenAcademic can do it.

And:
Those of us distraught by the turn suggested by Blackboard's patent announcement and suit against Desire2Learn can take heart from the following announcement from OpenAcademic:

"We are happy to announce the launch of the OpenAcademic project. This project is dedicated to integrating Elgg, Drupal, Moodle, and Mediawiki. All code developed under this project will be released back to the respective communities under an open source license, and it will be freely available to download and distribute."
http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/announcement/openacademic

I agree with Glen in a previous post: some of the PLE projects are just an attempt to tie down the free range.  But if you need something for an institution, this could be workable and give the freedom.  From the institutional POV the e-portfolio becomes the centre.

I've started to work on my suggested portfolio of tools for us, but nothing is quite there yet.  For formal taught courses, if I had to make a choice, I'd choose

1. For the private class activity, a virtual learning space . .
   1. a good calendar
   2. threaded discussion - subscribable via e-mail, ability to embed flickr, youtube, flash etc
      
   3. file sharing
   4. chat (Maybe with one of these things that brings together a range of chats, like Meebo)
      
   5. private but sharable at a post level reflective journals
   6. taggable
   7. with an RSS reader there somewhere
   8. identity profiles "Invite me to chat about"
   9. Content sharable between courses
   10. With a public course area . .  probably in a wiki
       
2. A public wiki for corperate activity.
   
3. Public blog: Wordpress provided for anyone who didn't have a blog already.
4. An RSS aggregator to bring class blogs together.
5. a sort of e-portfolio (NOT a form filling thing) Mahara maybe if it gets finished.
   
6. Maybe:
   
   1. Podcasting.
   2. Google docs??
   3. Class netvibes page
   4. class delicious tag
   5. plus as needed: gliffy (drawing) mind maps etc . . .

-Derek

There is another option to PC's (like Derek's original description: From Re: collecting information feeds for yourself and others? by dwenmoth on Monday, 4 June 2007 3:26:00 p.m.:  All of these things are very useful - the NetVibes account in particular as it enables me to access my PLE from anywhere or any machine. On the other hand, I tend to travel everywhere with my laptop - I POP all my mail to my email client installed on my laptop, and do the same with my RSS aggregator (NetNewsWire) so I can read through it all when offline - and since it manages all of my passwords etc so well, I tend to regard that as my PLE - a sort of on-line and off-line combination. )
You can use iPods.
I work with Bruce who claims to live a paperless life.  He nearly manages it.  It's his Paperless Learning Environment.

He uses two computers: both high spec'd Mac's. One at home, one at work.  Plus 1 iPod acting as a synced HDD.

Have a current (say) 10 gig of files that get worked on at work, synced to iPod, home to computer and synced there.

He develops for the web, PHP, java script and Flash.  Has a current working copy of major projects with him (pus a few things like a server and other geek stuff).  No backup problems.

Has all the other Mac goodies that help our lives . . .

Plus: easier to bike home without a laptop and you get iTunes as well.
Minus: need 2 computers.