2nd November Reflect on different kinds of online communities

You should now have more understanding about the difference between a community, a group and a team. Also how the roles of a teacher, moderator and facilitator differ and the diverse range of skills each role needs. Spend this week reflecting on what you have learned so far about different online communities and the roles and skills required of an effective facilitator.

To do
1. Write a post to your blog that reviews all you have considered in this course so far. When you talk about the previous posts you have made, please link to them so we can all track back to the orginal post.
2. Be sure to read the posts of some other participants and offer comments and feedback.

Last week's recording
Last week we met and discussed the features of social networking platforms and how we could use them for facilitation. We spent a lot of time discussing the issues of security and online identity. In response to this discussion, Herve has written a blog post discussing the issues and linking to some interesting articles about the dangers of using platforms such as Facebook. Herve has written:

I am more comfortable with a closed environment where you can control the membership of the group and moderate the content.

If you read his post, please leave a comment with your opinion and join in the discussion about how facilitators can ensure security yet encourage open networking and constructive engagement. Krishan has joined the conversation on his blog by publishing some very useful guidelines for using social networks.

The link to the recording is here.

Mini conference - time is running out
Just a reminder that the mini conference starts next week so you're running out of time for the planning and advertising. Please make sure you put the details of your event on the course wiki on the page "Course Mini Conference". Don't forget you can look to see what last year's partuicpants did if you want some ideas. Here are some ideas about how you can advertise your event:

• tell your work colleagues, institution or company;
• blog post;
• FO09 email group;
• create event on Facebook;
• email to 'networked learning' email group
• ask the group who use Twitter to send to their network.

If you are still struggling for ideas, please contact me persoanlly asap.

Practising with Elluminate
Just a reminder that if you want to practice the full range of facilities on Elluminate, you need to ask me to meet you there so I can give you the ability to be the 'teacher'. Once I have done that, I can leave you in peace to get on and have a 'play'. Please feel free to ask me to meet you in the evenings or at the weekend - I don't have a 'real' life so I'm online most of the time :)

Sarah

Image: 'Une représentation de mon réseau social dans+Facebook'
www.flickr.com/photos/49503019876@N01/1659321885 luc legay