Helen Walmsley

Hi Sylvia,
This is a very interesting topic - how do practitioners find appropriate networks? There are now lots of different communities and groups for teachers developing e-learning and these are scattered around the internet - perhaps what is needed is a 'meta community' that links them all up!

I have used a range of ways to promote the Best Practice Models community - presentations at conferences and local networks, postings to a variety of email lists with invitations to attend events and personal recommendations too! I also have groups on Facebook and Ning to signpost to the community.

Helen

Is there a summary of the presentation in English available?

Hello/Hola everyone! I'm based at Staffordshire University and up until last year facilitated the Best Practice Models for e-learning community (http://learning.staffs.ac.uk/bestpracticemodels/ ). I've been a fan of SCoPE for a while, but not participated much so far!

I wasn't able to attend the live session yesterday, but I've just listened to the recording and found it very interesting, thanks to both presenters. I was struck by the idea of 'meta-communities' ie a community that facilitates other communities and it reminded me of the IDEA platform for local government communities of practice in the UK. (http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/welcome.do ) Their approach is to offer the platform and allow any group to create a community within it. Each community has control over itself (rather like a Ning group), but there is a 'Community Hub' to bring them all together. I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all answer to the question about when is a group a community or a sub-community - why not let the group decide?

Helen

I agree that the access, motivation and socialisation stages take much longer in SL than in a discussion forum (I'm still falling off things in SL!). I also agree that there is an issue with students being distracted because of the new environment.

I'm interested in exploring what kind of SL-tivities can be designed to exploit the features of SL. I've designed an event in SL that will involve participants in:

• introducing themselves
• listening to an audio presentation (with PowerPoint slides)
• working in a small group (with voice/IM) to discuss the presentation and agree some ideas
• groups create note-card with feedback and post in note-card box
• groups re-convene to share feedback using voice/IM

This activity is pretty much what could be done face-to-face or in a forum, and I'd be interested to know if anyone has any ideas for SL activities that can't be done in face-to-face or forums. What are the unique affordances of SL?
Helen