Diego E. Leal Fonseca

Hi there!

I'm finally coming back online.. I had to deal with a nasty cold (bad enough as to raise some N1H1 paranoia :D) and a broken laptop... But anyway...

I have the feeling that it depends on the purpose behind the idea of network of communities... From what I've seen, in your case (Paul) it has to do with sharing community practices (and maybe getting some kind of 'scale economy'?) and getting people from different communities in touch with each other.

Now, to my particular context, it has to do with information serendipity. I'll try to explain my point. Let's say that people in this seminar are very good managing information overload, and they do know how to get access to new, unexpected, interesting and relevant information.

Now it's clear that (at least in the Colombian scenario) most of our teachers don't have this ability. Maybe some of them are e-mail power users, and maybe others use the educational portal we have, or some existing community platform. Add to this the different online communities and services many of them use, and it becomes apparent there are a lot of useful information that is not visible, just because people are part of networks that don't necessarily overlap.

That was a huge issue with Ning until a couple of months ago. Many of us were part of way too many communities, and the info was too dispersed to be useful. In April they made possible to follow network activity from a single entry point (sort of a personal page), which makes things way easier...

in my view (and for our particular problem), if we could get the info many of our communities are generating in some system, and get some single sign-on solution for all of them, maybe there could be a chance to add value to current users, suggesting relevant information placed in networks/communities the user is not part of.

I'm still having a hard time trying to make sense of all this (so it could make no sense at all :D), but such a system should be 'transparent' enough as to suggest the info and then lead people to the places where interactions are taking place. This means that, in my view, such a system is not really 'another network/community', but a personal hub where I get new pointers to relevant information, generated elsewhere.

This means that maybe such a system would not really require a facilitator, because the community interaction goes unaffected. Think of it as you would think of Facebook, for example. In FB, people create groups and communities, but there's no one from FB in charge of helping people to 'enhance' their community experience (which, by contrast, happens in some way in Ning).

What I'm seeing is that the things I'm talking about could be tied (or not) to an initiative like LTC. If a 'network of communities' means a new space for interaction, there are some things worth exploring ,like John suggests. If interactions happen elsewhere, there are a different set of issues to discuss.

There's something else I'd like to point out. Even in our case (Colombia) there are different approaches for the same thing. As we'll see later in the seminar, there are another approach (related to higher education online communities) closer to the LTC experience than the one I'm talking about. I'd say I'm more concerned with personal access to information, in addition to the community issues.

Happily, this is intended to be an exploratory seminar :D, so it makes sense to realize that there are a lot of subtle differences in our approaches, which is normal because we're coming from different needs.

I'm sorry about this long post... I guess I took advantage of you all to clarify my ideas a little bit! :D

Hi Barbara!

I really like the idea of meta networks/communities, because that's a way (in my view) to solve some of the linguistic mess :D that I've seen in my own exploration. I mentioned in my presentation that we're using in Spanish a word that means both 'grid' and 'network', that's why I like the idea of 'meta', because suggests something that could be on top of existing structures...

The slides that Paul mentions are part of a document describing a possible system (in our case, focused on personal content management), to integrate different computer systems, representing both communities and information sources, which I talked about in the Spanish online session.

One of the issues that appeared during the online session was if there was a need to have a centralized system to manage the different pieces of an educator's online presence, and who should be in charge of such a system (even more, if governments have any responsibility about it).

The importance of having some kind of diagram, like you say, came up during the Spanish session, too. I'm afraid there was some impression that the things I was talking about were in some way 'autonomous', but it's clear that such a system is part of a bigger context. I agree that having a graphical representation could definitely help to identify information flows, actors, and different interaction patterns that would have a huge impact in the design of an information system supporting a meta network/community.

Now, seems to me that such a representation will be very different depending on the local context. The picture for LTC will be very different for the one that I would draw for our case in Colombia, and even the purpose of the meta network/community have an important impact. For example, are we talking about a network of communities, or a network of repositories?

It's clear to me, at this point, the usefulness of Social Network Analysis techniques to model our community environments... And my feeling is that there's a lot of work to do in that area, at least here in Colombia.

All this discussion brings to my mind how these structures are needed as the complexity of our information environment grows... :) So it's an emergent issue, that will bring (as we're seeing) lots of new questions and challenges. so let´s keep discussing them! :D

By the way, thanks for that link!

Best,

Diego

Como les mencioné en la sesión en línea, estas ideas son el resultado de una exploración inicial (bastante conceptual) sobre estos temas.  Yo diría que por lo pronto hay más dudas que respuestas, así que será muy interesante escuchar sus impresiones y comentarios respecto a este trabajo.

La grabación de la sesión que realizamos ya está disponible, si usted no pudo asistir.

Aquí están los slides de la presentación:

Y el documento que describe en mayor detalle la exploración realizada, lo pueden encontrar aquí.

Retomando las ideas finales de nuestra sesión en línea, los invito a compartir sus ideas respecto a:

• Cuáles son los problemas a los que responde la noción de "malla" o "red de comunidades"?
• Qué términos nos pueden ayudar a minimizar una eventual confusión lingüística cuando nos referimos a este tema?
• Cómo se relacionan estas ideas con la noción de Ambiente Personal de Aprendizaje (PLE)?

Y por supuesto, las preguntas que cada uno de ustedes encuentre interesantes.  Recuerden que este es un seminario de carácter exploratorio, así que estamos todos invitados a explorar! 

English / Español

Welcome to this SCoPE seminar! In the next three weeks we'll be exploring some issues that appear when you are in charge of (or are part of) several online communities at a time. Through study cases, we intend to explore both the emerging issues and some approaches to them.

We expect this to be a bilingual seminar, so that's the reason this thread is in both English and Spanish. Other discussion threads will be developed in just one language, but we think this starting point could reflect the apparent confusion of having to deal with more than one language at the same time.

So, please let us know who you are, what brings you here, and something about your background. And be ready to join us in the online sessions and discussions ahead.

Welcome! :D

------------

Bienvenido a este seminario SCoPE! En las próximas tres semanas estaremos explorando algunas cosas que aparecen cuando usted está a cargo de (o hace parte de) varias comunidades en línea a la vez. A través de casos de estudio, pretendemos explorar tanto los problemas emergentes como algunas posibles formas de enfrentarlos.

Esperamos que este sea un seminario bilingue, y por esa razón este hilo de discusión está tanto en Español como en Inglés. Aunque otros hilos de discusión se desarrollarán en un sólo idioma, encontramos que este punto de partida puede reflejar la aparente confusión de tener que lidiar con más de un idioma a la vez.

Entonces, por favor cuéntenos quién es usted, que lo trae por aquí, y algo sobre su contexto (personal o profesional). Y prepárese para acompañarnos en las discusiones y sesiones en línea de los próximos días!

Bienvenido! :D

Hi Brigitte!

Well, I'm glad that I inspired you, even though I don't think I can cause that kind of reactions...

Now, seriously, I'm glad to meet you.  Now I have a partner to help me when I get back to old habits (lurking, that is...)

See you around!

Diego