Follow those CoPs........

Our collaboration project team is in hot pursuit of two sites that appear to be CoPs. Through a literature review of research on online communities as well as online communities of practice, the team has developed a likert-type evaluation tool for determining whether or not a community is a community of practice, and investigates whether the online community of practice meets the features of a CoP as outlined by Barab and Duffy (2000, p. 54) in Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning (Barab, Kling, & Gary, 2004).

The first site our team decided to pursue is Classroom 2.0. The site provides a wealth of information, experience, and interaction opportunities for teachers who have skills or want skills in teaching with technology. Our team task, to see if Classroom 2.0 meets criteria as a CoP. The second site, PBS Teacher Connect, is a community that had high interest for our team members. According to PBS Teachers Connect, it is an online community of teachers exchanging ideas, resources and instructional strategies on the integration of digital media and technology. We need to chase down some missing criteria with which to evaluate the sites, construct an online rubric for easy data collection, and aggregate the responses to show an averaged score for each sites feature effectiveness.

Our team decided to use a wiki to collaborate in completing the final task for the CI 5323 course. Since the course emphasized interaction and collaboration, the team determined that a wiki would be a nice tool to assist with collaboration by providing a common space for sharing and holding of information. Due to familiarity with PBWiki.com, a decision was made to build a site that would offer opportunities for individual and collaborative taskwork. The site, CI 5323 Collaborative Project, includes pages for each area of the assignment to hold the three products that are required for completion, namely, a literature review, a criteria based CoP evaluation rubric, and the rating and justification for each CoP evaluated.

Early on, there was some confusion about PBWiki.com mechanics, so a link to the PBWiki Manual was added. Each request was met with a response within 24 hours, as any comments, changes to the wiki, or private messages were tied to email. The email tie-in provided a quick way to track changes and be aware of any site related request or task related question or comment. For a workgroup that was intent on completing the task with limited face-to-face meetings for planning and executing the task, the wiki has provided a space to collaborate.

There are many tools out there in the universe of cyberspace that might have been utilized for our purposes, however, having at least one person who was intimately familiar with the online tool was of great benefit to the group effort as peer assistance for site technical difficulties was immediately available. To begin the collaboration, roles were assigned to each team member. The roles included one administrator; five writer/editors. It soon became evident that each person on the team required full-access in the administrator role and so all members status was changed. The administrative role provided more functionality and opportunity to tweak the task components, the wiki, and to improve a sense of individual accomplishment and identity in the assignment we were pursuing.

Wiki pages were created to separate assignment components that were in-progress, individual pages for storing information, resources, and references as well as a space to create drafts of self-assigned work. The nice thing about the wiki pages is that all pages were available to all members, which helped to direct and guide the coherence of our collaborative project. Members of the team could review other's work and organization to clarify their own products. While the discreet pages worked well to hold the various components of the task and provided workspace for individual members, the organization of PBwiki was confusing to several members who were unfamiliar with the mechanics of the site.

The assignment components and resulting pages were based upon the assignment requirements. Some research was required to determine the best tool to use to build and execute the evaluation of sites by rubric. After a comparison of SurveyMonkey.com and SurveyGizmo.com features, SurveyGizmo took center-stage. SurveyGizmo's features fell in line with collaborative products that needed to be created to meet the assignment goals. SurveyGizmo has more discrete survey design tools in its free version as well as providing a way to easily generate reports that summarize data, create bar and pie charts, and data tables.

In laying out the wiki, it was my intention as initial administrator to offer space to effectively discern and accomplish the specific goals of the assignment. I have realized that in self-defense, I like to control the environment for group task work in order to maximize my abilty to successfully participate as a fully engaged team member. My own disabilities provide a significant challenge to organization and work completion and over years of pursuing education, a fill-in the blanks approach to assignments has worked for me. I usually devise my own tools to manage assignment components, goals, and tasks, so that completion is a matter of filling in the required work. A drawback, however, for the team was that not all members require such structure and requests were made for private, individual workspaces--rather than just spaces for in-progress and finished collaborative work. There is a lesson in our team work together; individual space provides a sense of ownership, belonging, individual identity, recognition, and less structured environments for engaging in collaborative work. I will never make the mistake again to organize community workspace without also providing individual and private quarters for each team member. One person's access and organization may be another's nemesis.

The collaborative effort is almost completed, and the products for our assignment a coming along well. It is nice to peruse the member pages of the wiki as well as the product pages of the wiki to see what others are doing; how others pursue team task work. The collaboration for this project might be improved if the time were extended for establishing workspace, forming collaborative teams, and lengthening the time for working with each other from the last few weeks of class to introducing the class to online collaboration tools early, choosing collaborative groups early, and setting up the collaborative space early. Collaborative team members need time to familiarize themselves with any tool employed in order to feel comfortable using the tool. The lack of comfort with PBwiki for some team members slowed their participation or increased their stress and discomfort with the collaborative effort. Not having enough time to build a collaboration community that is comfortable with each other, the task, and the online work environment is counterproductive to meeting the goals of collaboratively working towards specified products.

Vizu Poll Tool...

Hey, I just found another cool tool, Vizu, a visual poll creator available online. The online web tool allows the registered user to create a self-scoring, animated poll that can be embedded on a site. Here is my first poll created with Vizu.

Online Surveys & Market Research

The poll is customizable for color, graphics, pie chart or bar graph, and scheduling the start/end dates for the published poll can be programmed at the time of creation. The creator can make the poll private or public and the embedded code for the poll can be copied and pasted into any website. In addition, there are tools available that can automatically upload the poll to a variety of online blogging tools, such as, WordPress.com or Blogger.com.

Did Passion Get Up and Go?

OK, so I have not been blogging for few days, but I really am losing my passion for blogging with so many other things to do and the end of the term approaching. I am ever so swamped with work, projects, and in the midst, have two out-of-town trips planned.

In addition, I am disillusioned with my choice of exemplar for the show and tell project--mostly because I was hoping that one of them (yes, I was checking out two communities at once--my usual back-up method) would work for this project. The most I can say is that after what I have found out about communities of practice and working communities, I have started to investigate other choices, while still trying to be involved in the ones I originally chose.

The reasons for my lack of passion with the RTI CoP on TA Communities are varied. First, the community aspect is very limited and access is extremely controlled with only limited interactivity. Second, the history of documents is sparce, and while the list of participants is large, the actual interaction through community discussion is non-existent (zero discussion, zero topics). Third, most of the activity takes place outside the RTI CoP using other technologies or through interacting with conference lecturers and small Q&A forums tied to the lecture--with no short-term or long-term projects or productive purpose--other than to reinforce the lecture of the moment. Although the information and online events are excellent when offered, I was looking for on-going, interactive, communal sharing of information, ideas, and resources on a more frequent and interactive basis. It would be fair to say that this community does not meet my expectations or desires or passions for interacting in a diverse, nationwide or worldwide community of practitioners, that can address issues inherent in RtI from multiple perspectives. I had hoped to find more peer-to-peer support rather than a top-down approach to presentation and dictated learning through presentation. So, my passion wains for interacting and working with this community....the opportunities are so constrained and limited. Ratz!

Of course, I had my back-up community, Disaboom.com,which I found interesting to begin with and was passionate about becoming involved for a variety of personal reasons. First, the site provides comprehensive opportunities to interact with the Disaboom community online through many web tools and interactive formats, such as topic oriented discussion groups, blogs, stories, news items, announcements, learning opportunities, groupings, individual profiles, as well as other affordances that support community building, sharing of knowledge, and expression of diverse beliefs and values. Second, my pursuit of special education teaching might find such a community useful to practice. Third, students with learning disabilities might find the site a supportive community that provides opportunities to interact with persons with a variety of disabling conditions and perspectives about living with those differences. Unfortunately, I was put-off early from true interaction with this site since a situation had developed on the site just prior to my membership that involved online flaming of a member by another member--and both members were booted-off the site. The chatter after that event gave the impression of some very mean spirited interaction, a very confrontive population, a socially conflicted community, but, a community. I just have been somewhat reluctant (actually resistent) to putting my own personal self, story, questions, and input out there. Instead, I find that my passion for interaction has gone PFFFFT!

So, what I have learned is that lurking awhile, exploring, and being on the periphery of a community can entice members to participate or deter member involvement--depending on the entry point and welcoming that a new member receives. The RtI group was extremely welcoming and attentive and without direct interaction with members, only opportunities for discourse with staff and experts in the field of practice, no conflict arose, but the follow-through, and community aspects of this group did not meet the criteria for an interactive community of practice. The Disaboom community, contrasted sharply with the RtI CoP, but had a number of drawbacks that were barriers to eliciting communication, knowledge sharing, and interactions from newbies, like myself.

Although my initial passion for the RtI CoP and the Disaboom community petered-out to a large degree, since my experiences with these communities, the course readings and discussions, and the excellence of presentations in the course, I am going to use my experiences with these two communities to promote my developing passion for excellence in online learning to guide the design and development of future online learning environments. In addition, I can include in my passion for learning and teaching the improvement of online learning through engagement and improved outcomes as an outgrowth of community interaction opportunities that are promote authenticity in future fields of practice.

All is not lost. Even difficult community or lack of community opportunities can be individually informative and succinctly transforming! Initial community difficulties can passionately propel a person into a search for a purposeful and productive community of practice.

Ning is nice....

We had a presentation in class on Ning.com, a social networking, online tool that provides free space and interaction tools for group networking. The instructor set up a Ning site for the CI5323 class members and we have been using it to communicate with each other. Ning provides tools, such as, blogs, email, video uploads, photo uploads and albums, and personal space as well as others, to enhance the social networking and interaction on the site. I have enjoyed checking-out the site and can think of several ways this tool might be used for a course, or for family communication.



As much as I find the site appealing and useful to group sharing, there are a few things that I am not too excited about. The site, while glitzy, is distracting for me, personally. I am finding it difficult to locate specific areas and to navigate the site tools. The learning curve, while not steep, is cumbersome to just getting started with this site. It was good to get a presentation on Ning.com in class and I know that for very specific purposes, I would definitely utilize this tool.

The one thing I really like about the site is that as administrator, it is possible to curtail certain linking activities and set-up administrative approved member sign-in and viewing. Utilizing this tool for a class might work best for older students--since there are advertisements that may be inappropriate or distracting to younger students. The creation of personal pages is also a very good feature and would allow a teacher to portfolio course work for each student in one place so that sharing between the student community would be a possibility. The best feature for myself being quite busy and having several sites going at once, is the email notification of content changes, requests for approval, and other changes, which are directly linked from the email so that changes are only a matter of acceptance or non-acceptance.

Overall, I think ning.com is an online tool that has great possibilities when matched with course objectives and community behavior goals.

Exciting Online Event for Educators....

LearningTimes. net sent me an email regarding the K12 Online Conference 2008 free event, which began on October 13 with preconference keynote speeches and continues through October 31. Participation is open to everyone. Check it out at the K12Online 2008 Help Desk hosted by wikispaces.com. Since pre-conference events have already taken place, there area audio podcasts available. If you decide to attend any of the sessions, or listen to the audio podcasts, etc., let me know what you think.

Is RTI a CoP.....

I have attended two events through the RTI Community of Practice that I joined on the TA Communities stie. The third event I missed. I assumed that as the other events I attended, the information would be recorded and posted from the webinar, but no. I am still trying to find if it has been posted in another area or on another site--since the second webinar was recorded and posted through air.org, a live meeting host.

As far as what we have learned in the course, I am not certain if the RTI CoP is really a CoP. It doesn't seem to meet the criteria. Although there is some history of documents recorded and materials from past webinars available, not all materials or webinars are available within the community site and links to some events are non-existent. Unfortunately, the site seems to operate as a link to lectures on the topic of RTI--but there are no discussions available for perusal or contribution on the site. Some of the webinars have threaded discussions or simple questions from participants responded to by the lecturer, but interactivity is extremely limited and controlled by the lecturer. Consistency in the mechanism that is provided for discussion seems to be lacking across the events offered to members of this "community." The community consists mainly of a list of current and past participants--but I see no evidence of any interactivity between participants.

I am trying not to judge this site too harshly as there is good information and I feel that the sharing of up-to-date information is one of the purposes that is fulfilled by this community. I am mystified, however, that an educational site that is connected to some of the governmental educational sites has missed the mark on providing the interaction component here.

Disaboom is a Bomb....

As much as I was interested in Disaboom as a possible community, I am disappointed with the type of community that has developed within some of the groups on the site. I appreciate the articles, the information about various conditions or disabilities, but I do not like the very nasty comments that seem to creep through some of the group threaded discussions. There is a sharing of too much personal information (if what is said about others can be believed), and I feel that there is a definite lack of moderation. The groups do not seem to moderate themselves very well either. I was really quite hopeful for this site as a type of community that could offer some insights and a place for students with special needs to learn about and express their thoughts in constructive ways with others that have differences. I am really bummed that Disaboom seems to have bombed-out on my first impressions. I really am somewhat fearful of entering into any discussions with anyone, rather a very peripheral participant at this point, since I don't want conflict and confrontation. I would rather maximize information sharing in a positive way. The site is waaaaay tooooo negative in some discussion areas. I like a little more positive spin on any group I join. I will still keep searching around the site and take what I can from it; maybe I will be willing at some point to participate more directly if I can find a group that seems more reasonable. I will keep you all posted!

Add Some Video Vavoom...

Last night in class we discussed fitting technical tools to the needs of communities. We explored the ideas that designers of online learning communities need to align their design and development goals to support the group activities and goals. So much of online learning community design is a top-down process with designers at the top and the community (or hoped-for community) at the bottom of the process. The reverse would better serve a community that wants and needs a online learning community space, a conferencing space, or whatever collaborative space they determine would work to further the community goals.

We also discussed that the idea of "build it and they will come" online design, is not as successful as utilizing existing groups, communities, organizations, and databases to establish intent and alignment of planning, design, and implementation of online tools, spaces, and activities as well as to inform design process, timing, and rhythm of development in coordination with existing entities. It is important that designers actually put together a feasibility plan where task force input, physical and online visit data is gathered, and advisory groups are created to inform the development process on an continuous process. Evaluation criteria for each phase of the project could be developed.

Ok, so what does this have to do with Video Vavoom? Well, I was thinking that having a mechanism to meet and speak with others in real-time to help with development could be an asset not only for designers, but also for a community that wishes to share information easily to collaborate, participate, observe, or evaluate activities of a group.

I have been running around the net and found some interesting free tools that could work for online video communication with collaborative/advisory groups. One such online tool is Paltalk Express, which is free with registration and sign-up and accommodates up to 200 viewers and participators. There are moderator tools and security features available for presenters. Audio-visual communications can be controlled by the moderator using a raised hand tool similar to the chat tools CI 5323 has used in WebCT.

In another jaunt on the web, MeBeam, a free video conferencing tool--but without the admin oversite of Paltalk Express. MeBeam seems to be a more informal and limited tool than Paltalk Express. It is extremely easy to set-up an online space to video meet with a small group. Microphone capabilities allow audio-visual communications.

The RTI CoP Works for Me...

Today was the day. Today the RTI Community of Practice hosted a conference call--a presentation by Ed Shapiro, a professor from Lehigh University, who spoke about the evaluation of RTI. This worked out well for me as I received information in the presentation that will assist in directing my M.Ed. paper on RTI. At first I was rather dismayed that I had joined a Community of Practice that utilized such old technology to host distance presentations. I remember conference call-in methods in the 70's and 80's--before the internet. I decided to stick with this online community as I wanted to get the RTI information that this group might offer me--and I am so glad that I did.

Instructions and handouts. I joined the RTI Community of Practice through the TACommunities.org and promptly received an email thanking me for joining and an invitation to today's conference call presentation with instructions, phone number, and identification code. I visited the site today before the conference and found the PowerPoint presentation was available for download as well as a flier about the conference. I downloaded the presentation, printed off slide handouts, and familiarized myself with the topic prior to the conference. It was great! I loved the opportunity to prepare questions from the handouts before the conference started and to look over the content, too.

The method. I was a little nervous about calling into the conference--I don't trust technology to work flawlessly--but the fact that this was over the telephone and that previous conference information had been posted made me feel more secure that even with a phone failure I could still get the presentation information. Well, fortunately, everything worked perfectly. At 1:58pm, I dialed the number given in the email, dialed in the code and WaaLaaah! at 2:00pm (3:00pm EST) I was connected to the presentation. The Conference was interactive over the phone allowing participants to ask questions a various intervals. In fact, Dr. Shapiro said that he would respond to questions throughout the presentation as well as at the end. Several times Dr. Sharpiro stopped and asked if there were any questions--but there were none--until the presentation was finished and it was the Q&A time. Then, participants asked many questions and received answers--even some of the questions I was going to ask were addressed.

The moderator. The moderator, Sarah provided "housekeeping rules" and made requests for emails from the partiicpants for attendance purposes. In addition, the moderator advertised future conference calls in the same topic area to the participants--thus marketing additional conferencing opportunities. The moderator was very skilled in using the technology for this conference call method and helped to solve technical issues that did arise for some participants; asking the presenter to repeat the last slide notes, mute and unmute, press certain keys to reset the microphone, etc. There were a few unexpected interruptions, such as the ringing of phone of various participants in offices or background noise, voices from participant locations. This situation seemed to cause the presenter some discomfort--as he commented, "I sure hope that phone gets answered soon." The moderator took care of technical problems for the presenter as they arose, calmly, and clearly providing instruction to keep things moving.


Paying attention. Having preprinted my handouts from the RTI online community document area I was able to pay attention to the audio conference and easily take notes. Participants were easy to hear, and the moderator and the presenter were very clear. The only thing that was difficult was that the presenter referred to the slides by number--and the slides were not numbered.

Body language, no problem. There has been a great deal of talk in CI 5323 about the lack of body language in online learning and how that can adversely affect understanding. I didn't find that I missed seeing the presenter or the other participants at all. In fact, it seemed natural to listen to the presenter and participants on the phone without seeing anything additional to the handouts. I think in this case, having the handouts and a picture of the presenter as well as having information about the credentials of Dr. Shapiro was all that I really needed. My intent was to get the topic content--and the conference call method accomplished that for me.

Audience intent. It occurred to me that the reasons for participation dictate the expectations for the presented content and that the method of presentation doesn't really matter as much as the clarity of content and the acceptance of the context. I was a newbie to this type of conference--but most of the participants had attended many of the previous conference calls. I was surprised that I was so comfortable with this method of attending a conference; it was a little like listening to a radio program. In someways, there was less interaction during the conference as very few questions were asked--with most participants waiting until the presentation was finished to ask questions. I didn't interact except to make my presence know when asked.

Final thoughts. All in all, this was a very pleasant experience for me and I got very specific information that can be useful in guiding my M.Ed. paper on RTI. I fully intend to participate in the Webinar that was advertised during the conference. In addition, now that I have looked around the site and the RTI Community of Practice pages, I have found previous documents and presentations as well as conference discussion notes that are made available for each community event. There are links to many resources that provide a wealth of information and leads for research projects and papers that are specific to literature search topic.

I might use this conference call method for delivery of specific inservice type content--it provided an easy, low tech context for busy people (educators, principles) to connect with needed content pertinent to their field of practice using any type of phone from any location. I am not sure what type of software or service was used to serve the conference, but I will find out from the moderator so that I can check it out for my own future use.

One drawback to this method, and a significant one, is that although the handouts and discussion notes were available as online, downloadable documents, the actual conference presentation using the LIVE conference call method would not be accessible to all participants. For example, participants with sensory, auditory, or information processing disabilities might find the technology used would exclude them from receiving the conference content. I don't remember seeing anything in the advertising that addressed providing needed accommodations to participants with disabilities. If this conference were provided as live online video and audio with closed captioning, it would be much more accessible during and after the presentation. It seemed rather strange to me that a conference presentation that deals with a special education topic would be delivered by a method that overlooks access to all.

Disappointed but undaunted....

Oh boy, I am really disappointed. I just checked out the discussion topics for the RTI CoP I joined and there aren't any. Geesch, I thought there would be some discussion. There is an upcoming conference call on September 15 at 1:00pm that I expect to particpate in, but I really was expecting the community of practice to be more conversational, to have work projects, research, etc. I am really disappointed as I thought this would be right up my alley for my M.Ed. paper. Oh well, I am going to check out the materials from previous conferences, and I guess there is a reason that the phone is used instead of the interent--but I cannot for the life of me understand it. I will try to connect with some of the moderators for the conference and find out what I can about any projects or work teams that may be out there or that "could" be out there. Maybe I can participate in one of them--if they exist. So onward and upward!

I'm a member of a CoP....

Well, in order to check out a few of the communities that I found, I decided to join a few. Most communities are closed to anonymous contributors so unless you identify yourself, you cannot check out the neighborhood. I have found basically three main types of communities online, social, learning oriented, and communities of practice. The social groups include many types of communities, some with text and video chats such as those in ICQ.com, Windows Live Messenger, some virtual environments such as Second Life.com, There.com, or Whyville.net include avatars, virtual real estate, and mobility, while others provide space for a variety of interactions and sharings such as MySpace.com or Facebook.com. There are, of course, online learning communities (OLC) such at those connected with universities, educational organizations, or commercial education providers, for example, The Washington Center, McREL, or WASDInet, that provide courses or other learning opportunities or discussions for sharing of information, some free and some for fees--most require registration prior to entry. Another challenge I encountered was to find communities of practice (CoP) that are free to join; some CoPs charge a monthly fee for participation;there are eligibility requirements for being approved as a member. Some CoPs are very particular who can be a part of their work groups--only accepting members with certain credentials in particular fields of discipline. I actually found a community that deals with educational topics that are pertinent to my field of study, TACommunities, in particular, I joined a community, the RTI Community of Practice, that deals with the topic of my Master paper. I have just received a confirmation email from the group and was surprised to learn that part of the discussions are via telephone conference call. I have been given a number to call and a code to enter for a conference call. The conference lecturer will be a person notable in the education fiield, focusing research on RTI, Ed Shapiro of Lehigh University.

I am anxious to get involved with the RTI CoP group, but also want to check out a couple other groups I have found and will report on my progress in those groups also. One of the other groups I have joined is Disaboom, a community for those touched by disability, and Alice a free 3D programming software and support community for schools and users.

The process of looking for communities has been eye-opening, and well worth the time spent. I have been involved in course and community listserves in the past, as well as checking out newsgroups and support forums for particular problem solving assistance, but I didn't realize there were work groups that were open for interested individuals, task force groups for particular policy or commercial studies. Well, time to get involved and will report back on my progress.