Christie Mason

Why?

Based on decades of experiences, it appears to me that every time an effective informal process becomes formalized and evaluated, it then becomes restricted, loses power and loses effectiveness.

I think it w/b useful for educators and trainers to define what informal learning processes are used, and why they're used/preferred, only if the intent of the evaluation is to improve formal learning processes.

As soon as you formalize the evaluation of informal learning, it's no longer informal.

Christie Mason

Are we ever going to talk about something besides scheduling SL tours?  I was hoping/expecting this would be a discussion of handling trolls, inviting participation, managing synch and asynch discussions, nurturing communities of interest, differences and sameness between a moderator and a facilitator, differences and samesness between facilitating verbal discussions vs text based, installing forum/conference software, comparisons of open-source/proprietary/ASP(as Application Service Provider, not Active Server Pages) applications, value of posting rating systems, etc & etc.

 Christie Mason

I'm looking at all the links to student's thoughts and wonder what type of expectations these students have about the privacy of their thoughts?  In an odd way the web offers a type of anonymity because it is an ocean of words.  It can also create environments that feel secluded and private, where students may forget that they're not just creating a paper for a class assignment  Those  thoughts will be available to the whole world for the rest of their life, and perhaps even beyond. 

Instructors - Did you set an expectation with your students that you would be sharing links to their thoughts with other groups?  Or, because frameworks like LJ are not password protected - do the student have full realization that their thoughts will be available to the world - to infinity ("and beyond" as Buzz Lightyear would say)?

Christie Mason

I've never had a very positive impression of WebCT's accessibility or usability, but I haven't seen it lately so I Googled and found

http://www.evc.edu/ada/modules/WebCT/index.htm

I wish, wish, wish people would put dates on their articles but I didn't see any within that link so I don't know if the info in the link is current.

Christie Mason

(Speaking of Googling, I couldn't find this site by Googling (SCoPE is a frequently used acronym) and it was only after I Googled for my name and "Scope" that I was able to refind it - odd)

I've never had a very positive impression of WebCT's accessibility or usability, but I haven't seen it lately so I Googled and found

http://www.evc.edu/ada/modules/WebCT/index.htm

I wish, wish, wish people would put dates on their articles but I didn't see any within that link so I don't know if the info in the link is current.

Christie Mason

(Speaking of Googling, I couldn't find this site by Googling (SCoPE is a frequently used acronym) and it was only after I Googled for my name and "Scope" that I was able to refind it - odd)