Playing around with social networking tools
Well, do you like my new blog theme? I thought it was time to try a new look. This must be the day for trying new things because I also migrated my bookmarks to Diigo. I really like the ease of use and the way I can organize my bookmarks into lists. Easy to tweet them out too. I have also been mapping out my PLN (personal learning network) using a social networking site called pearltrees.
Just playing around and following interesting links through my PLN I came across this “cheat sheet” that sums up my approach to tech support. Enjoy.
PCOT, ZOHO AND WYSIWYG
Here’s to PCOT, ZOHO and WYSIWYG
Well, its 2012, and I’ve started a new online learning program, the Professional Certificate in Online Teaching, PCOT for short, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As I was exploring the site, I came across a website called Learning 2.0. This is a fairly old (2009) site that lists 23 small exercises designed to help anyone learn about Web 2.0 tools. Creating a blog is one of the exercises and based on my own experience, getting started with blogging was not a small exercise for me. My first experience with blogging in 2010 was challenging! Of course the hard part about jumping into the blogging world for me was overcoming my fear of exposing myself in the web 2.0 world, not learning to use the technology. But those fears are long gone and I am a blogger. Whether I find learning new apps a small or big task, I have discovered that becoming more familiar with new tools is worth an investment of time. Learning what works for others also helps me sort out and prioritize the almost overwhelming number of open source options available. My blog, Learning out in the open, is my attempt to share some of what I am learning in the hope that others will find it helpful.
One of the 23 suggested exercises was to ”take a look at some online productivity tools, primarily for wordprocessing and spreadsheets. This lead me to ZoHo writer, a tool much like Google docs but one that appears to be easier to use. I was especially attracted to the feature that allows you to create a document and post directly to your blog. This productivity tool woudl also make collaborative blog writing much easier. My blogging home is WordPress and although it is very easy to use I’d like to be able to simplify it even more and also invite others to co-write with me from time to time. So here it goes my first blogpost posted from ZoHO.
Communicating online for connected coaching
The foundation of coaching whether face to face or online is communication. Connected online coaches need to pay special attention to developing effective online communication skills.
What does good online communication look like for a connected coach?
• Demonstrates genuine interest in hearing the speaker/writer
• Is authentic
• Expresses warmth and curiosity about the speaker/writer
• Purposefully builds trust and rapport
• Focuses deeply on the messages being sent
• Use techniques such as paraphrasing and questioning to insure understanding
• Uses a variety of media tools–visual, audio and written online venues to
deepen the conversations
• Responds positively with strength based observations
• Facilitates new thinking
I’ve found a useful tool to add audio to online communication. It’s Audioboo, a social networking tool that works for both mobile and web platforms that allows you to record and share audio messages. You go to their website to register for free and then you can record messages up to three minutes in length if you want to use it to make longer recordings you have to pay 60 pounds per year. that is about $97 Canadian.
I’ve left you a little message here on audioboo:
The power of belief
Today I am reflecting on how coaching and facilitating change when you move into an online learning environment.
I have worked throughout my years as an educator to develop my competency as a learning facilitator. I have trained as a life skills coach at the YWCA, a trainer for Nobody’s Perfect, a parenting program; I have designed and delivered facilitator training to others—so I feel quite knowledgeable about how to work with groups and facilitate learning. I have noticed that there is a great deal of similarity between the knowledge, skills and attitudes of learning facilitators and those needed to coach. So how does the online context impact on what I know of coaching? Let’s compare.
I believe it is the job of both the learning facilitator and the coach to:
• inspire
• create a safe learning environment
• attend to individual and group needs—to listen deeply, question wisely to help members make sense of their learning
• to set the tone and model positive attitudes
• respect and honour members contributions
• share values
• think with foresight
Tools & techniques of facilitation are designed:
• to make interactions easier
• set the context for learning
• engage learners/workers
• promote sharing of ideas and knowledge
• link minds—help make the necessary connections
• spark motivation and passion
• release the wisdom of the individual/group
• move individual/group to action
These dispositions and skills look very similar to the “markers” of connected coaching: trust building, questioning and facilitating design thinking.Coaching Markers such as:
Trust Building
• Establishing rapport
• Examining climate and culture
• Setting ground rules
• Establishing norms
• Exploring hopes and fears
Questioning
• Seeking stories
• Doing active listening
• Paraphrasing/mindfulness
• Making observations
• Mediating Thinking
• Affirming potential
• Asking appreciative questions
• Discovering strengths
• Clarifying focus
• Making requests
Facilitating design thinking
• Framing aspirations
• Brainstorming ideas
• Inviting possibilities
• Designing experiments
Common Activities used in f2f groups for coaching or to facilitate learning can be remixed and implemented online.
Activities such as: Getting acquainted exercises, establishing ground rules, eliciting group expectations, setting goals and objectives, small discussion groups and small group presentations, reflective discussions, energizers, brainstorming, storytelling, prioritizing and getting to decision
So how does coaching/facilitating change when it goes online?
It doesn’t. It just gets harder to create a supportive learning environment and make the connections required. An online coach or a “connected coach” not only needs all of the knowledge skills and attitudes of the face to face coach but also needs to be able to apply them in an online environment. This requires knowledge of how to use a variety of software tools and apps. Online coaching also calls for a greater time commitment on both the part of the coach and the learners. Most online coaching scenarios provide for both synchronous and asynchronous communication so the connected coach and the team members have to spend a lot of time online, participating in discussions and responding quickly to postings and email. This is in addition to posting activities, assignments and facilitating synchronous classwork. The time commitment for an online coach greatly exceeds f2f coaching.
Creative use of online collaboration tools contributes greatly to establishing an online learning environment where participants feel safe and able to trust the coach and each other. Connected coaches need to take the time to build relationships with the group members and provide opportunities for group members to connect with each other. There are numerous software tools and apps available to support online collaboration and connected thinking. Some of the tools that we have used in the connected coaching course are: Blackboard for synchronous classes; Wall wisher ; Picnik; Google docs;ietherpad;fotobabble; VoiceThread ; Vocaroo, YouTube. Learners, however, may need support to maximize the use of these tools so the coach needs to insure that support is offered and given when needed.
Perhaps the greatest disposition that the connected coach needs however is belief—belief that online spaces can be productive, exciting learning spaces where great things can happen. Belief can be infectious. If I believe in the efficacy of online learning spaces, hopefully that can transferred to the team I am working with and together we can inspire each other to deeper learning.
Come on in, the waters fine!
This is cross posted from the College’s 20/20 Vision blog, www.arcticcollege.ca/blogs
Many scholars acknowledge that we are in the midst of a huge social change brought on by the growing influence of the digital world. I argued in my previous post that humans survive and thrive through adaptation, and by learning to use new tools for survival. George Siemens suggests in his defense of Connectivism, a learning theory he developed, that “ Tools change people. We adapt based on new affordances”. In this paper he also adds that: “Too many educators fail to understand how technology is changing society. While hype words of web 2.0, blogs, wikis, and podcasts are easy to ignore, the change agents driving these tools are not. We communicate differently than we did even ten years ago. We use different tools for learning; we experience knowledge in different formats and at a different pace. We are exposed to an overwhelming amount of information requiring continually greater levels of specialization in our organizations”.
So if you, like me, are not very knowledgeable about the new tools and the participatory digital world, what can you do about it?
A simple search on Google or one of the powerful search engines that most of us use from time to time will bring up an almost endless menu of free online courses, webinars, and mini workshops that teach how to use the tools and /or get engaged in the digital world. Join a MOOC, such as Change11, and you will immediately be connected with an extensive network of knowledgeable, digitally savvy educators from around the world. If that seems too overwhelming, join a smaller online learning community. Some of us need more help. We need an invitation to jump into the water! or even a little push.
In my experience I have found that one of the best ways to learn new skills and encourage the mind shift that becoming a citizen in the digital world entails is to join an online learning community. Many online communities operate according to principles of participation and mutual learning. Henry Jenkins, MIT media scholar, describes the online learning community as a good example of the emerging participatory culture. He describes some of the elements of online Learning communities as: “strong support for creating and sharing creations with others, some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices, members who believe that their contributions matter, and members who feel some degree of social connection with one another (at least, they care what other people think about what they have created)”.
These functions are clearly demonstrated in the learning community that I have recently joined, Powerful Learning Practices. Powerful Learning Practice uses a new model for professional development for teachers at all levels, that offers opportunities to:
• Work together collaboratively to understand 21st Century learning environments through immersion in these environments
• Re-envision their curriculum in ways that are relevant for today’s learners
• Manage change through communities and networks
This model is currently enabling thousands of educators around the country to experience the transformative power of the social Web: Face-to-face in their own schools, exchanging ideas through a community of inquiry, and in re-envisioning their own personal learning practice.
The warm caring members of the community that I have joined support and encourage me to grow professionally and to try new tools in a safe, authentic learning environment. I am currently enrolled in one of the online courses offered by the PLP, Connected Coaching. This course like U of Regina’s ec&i831 which I took last year, is providing me with the opportunity to join a new (to me) affinity space where the skills of the group are pulling me towards their expertise and exposing me to new ways of thinking about learning and teaching.
Once you figure out how to join the online learning revolution and jump in, there is no end to the learning opportunities and resources that you can access. Come on in the water’s fine!
"You can't cross a sea by merely staring into the water." Rabindranath Tagore
Fall: the Season for Learning
Fall is here and my thoughts turn to going back to school…how traditional is that in this world of asynchronous, open online learning?
I have enrolled in Powerful Learning Practices free Web 2.0 course, a pre-game warm up. Our second lesson, What is Web 2.0 and why does it matter, asked us to review a number of videos, blogs and discussions about the web and its potential for changing the way we teach and learn. I found myself still having an inner debate:
Do schools in Nunavut have an obligation to teach students to be knowledgeable digital learners?
With pros and cons still filling my head my position on this debate is YES. Educators everywhere will do their students a great disservice if we do not prepare our students to be full participants in a society which is increasingly dependent on the Web. That does not mean we ignore the “old” literacies, but that we recognize and teach the new literacies required to be successful in the 21st century as well.
Bottom line: As a race, humans survive and thrive through adaptation. Inuit are masters of adaptation and survival. Systems, including education institutions also need to continually adapt. Adaption to the exploding Web 2.0 world and learning to use new tools is a logical step forward for all people. Those people and institutions who don’t adapt will be left behind.
So here I am learning to adapt…out in the open so to speak. I am more knowledgeable about Web 2.0 now than I was last year at this time when I started this blog but still feeling overwhelmed by the numbers of apps and tools available. I could play on the Web all day and all night and still not develop the ability to use most of the available tools effectively. The time has come for me to focus my attention, set some specific learning goals for this year and practice using selected apps until I reach a comfort level with them.
Goal # 1:
Continue to engage in stimulating dialog about digital learning with fellow educators by
- Regularly posting to both my Learning Out in the Open blog and the College’s 2020 Vision blog
- Changing the theme and appearance of the blogs and adding new blog tools
- reviewing and updating my RRS feeds to Google Reader
- participating in the mooc, Change:Education, Learning and Technology
Goal # 2:
Contribute to the growing professional online community at Nunavut Arctic College by:
A connected coach uses techniques like appreciative inquiry, essential questions, and other cognitive coaching and deep thinking methods to help individuals and teams self-actualize in online spaces. Connected coaches are the social artists that help people think deeply about the learning that is taking place in the shared online environment.
Goal # 3
Learn to use more Web 2.0 tools by:
- Experimenting with one new ( to me) Web 2.0 tool every time I post to Learning Out in the Open
Tool for today: Pics4Learning.com
Pics4Learning is a copyright-friendly image library for teachers and students. The Pics4Learning collection consists of thousands of images that have been donated by students, teachers, and amateur photographers. Unlike many Internet sites, permission has been granted for teachers and students to use all of the images donated to the Pics4Learning collection.
Come along and learn with me. I guarantee that you will be challenged and might even have fun.
Higher Learning
Feel free to share your professional learning goals with us by leaving a comment below. (Click on the comments tag above the post).
Go on inspire us!
Purposeful practice
Don’t you just love this Web 2.0 learning thing? I do. You never quite know where you are going to end up on any given day, or who you are going to discover when you start exploring your collection of bookmarks and Google Reader feeds. This weekend I ended up on Jim Knight’s blog, Radical Learners. I’m not quite sure how I got there but I know it started with following some links discovered through my growing learning network. I liked a lot of what I read on this site (even shared some of them with my Facebook friends) but the concept that really got my attention was what he wrote about the concept of purposeful practice. Knight writes (paraphrased):
What separates the good from the average, and the great from the good is a particular kind of practice–purposeful practice. This kind of practice only happens when we (a) get really clear on very specific areas we need to improve, (b) choose to step outside our comfort zone and make attempts that challenge us to get better in those specific areas, and (c) gather data on how well we are doing at improving in those specific areas.
All of us, whatever we do, have the chance to get much better if we choose to do purposeful practice. Purposeful practice, by definition, takes us out of our comfort zone. In our first attempts we will feel uncomfortable both because of the experience of truthfully confronting reality and by struggling to do things we’ve never done before. But staying in our comfort zone and sleeping on the job is an unrewarding alternative. 
The real reward of teaching is to become better, to learn, and to prompt and inspire our students in their learning. We won’t have that experience, perhaps the most rewarding part of teaching, if we choose sleep through the many chances we have to learn every day.
I think many of us can relate to these ideas, particularly in our teaching and learning. It is so much easier to stay in our comfort zones; to avoid the discomfort and potentially embarrassing moments of learning and applying new tools and techniques in our teaching. Learning in eci831 pushed me beyond my comfort zone at times; however, in looking back it was those moments of frustration and discomfort that pushed me to a higher level of understanding and performance. Was it worth it? Yes, indeed!
Life after EC&I831
If I thought eci831 was over last night, I was wrong! When I got into my Google Reader account this morning I had 16 unread blog posts from my classmates. This is a good thing, as I am sure that I would experience blog- post-reading withdrawal without them. However I have heard that there is life after eci831 so I have prepared several survival strategies.
Survival Strategy 1: Care and Feeding of the College Community blog: “20/20 Vision, Taking the long view”, my eci831 project.
Our project assignment was to design a “ digital project related to using technology in teaching and learning”. Since our college is still at the thinking stage of adapting to the digital world and I am currently an administrator not a teacher, I decided the most useful project would be a community blog, designed to encourage communication that will contribute to planning for distance learning at Nunavut Arctic College. A blog seemed to be the best choice for us at this time as it provides a virtual space to not only share information and create dialogue about technology in education but it can also be a place where we can provide links related to pedagogy and continuing professional development and others can easily comment or become authors. This project was not technically challenging however the challenge lies in engaging staff, improving College-wide communications and developing a connected network of educators throughout the college. Communication issues are historic in our organization: the college is geographically dispersed across three time zones and 25 remote, isolated fly-in communities; the majority of the staff are working full out and often doing the work of several people; program, community, and regional silos abound; internet service has been dismally slow or non-existent. The blog provides the means but will it help change our attitudes and help us see beyond the boundaries of our community learning centres, programs and campuses?
Much that has been written about building online communities advises starting small, making personal connections, soliciting input and recognizing contributions from members. With this advice in mind I initiated the project by:
1. Involving our Public Affairs Officer and creating a 4 person media team in the local office where I work.
2. While on duty travel throughout the college meeting with staff 1-1 whom I know have an interest in technology in education and soliciting their support.
3. Pitching the blog to the Senior Management Team and seeking the President’s support.
4. Establishing a schedule for “guest bloggers” both internal and external
5. Sending broadcast emails to announce each fresh blog post.
6. Eliciting support through my eci831 network for comments and resources.
The blog is up and running. No college staff have posted comments yet but we have had several interesting comments from outside. I am starting to get encouraging email responses from staff and one tweet in response to the broadcast emails; hopefully, public comments from staff will follow. We will continue discussions at our next senior management meeting and I fully expect those discussion to result in the development of a concrete plan for IT staffing and a “Distance Learning Plan”.
As for 20/20 Vision, I will continue to personally invite individuals to participate and build our network one node at a time. I will use the site to recognize the hard work and accomplishments of our staff and consult with them more to identify what information, tools and resources will make the blog more interesting and useful to them. Perhaps I feel a wiki moment coming up?
Survival Strategy 2: Care and Feeding of a newborn techie teacher
EC&I831 has hatched a newbie Tech teacher–me, and like a new born chick I am hungry for more.
First, I’m going to take a peck at formalizing my own PLE, and continue to follow the work of my fellow eci’ers. That process will include documenting a personal learning plan and re-examining much of the eci831 information. Sorting out the 100’s of references to tools and information that I have collected in the last three months will keep me busy for quite a while. I plan to get a domain name and set up my online portfolio– something I have wanted to do for some time. Creating the online portfolio is a major learning project in itself, one that will encourage me to learn to use new apps and become more comfortable with different technologies, situated learning at its best.
Then it’s more online learning for this chick. I wrote on my very first blog post: “As I think about a change of careers and a move back into the classroom I am intrigued and challenged to learn how to use social media and open learning as tools to enhance my teaching”. It is still my plan to return to classroom teaching soon, however my definition of classroom is now expanding to include a virtual classroom. What a perfect time for me to develop the skills and knowledge to become a certified online teacher. So–next step, more online courses and a PCOT.
Survival Strategy 3: Seek balance in life: Don’t forget little chick that there is both a virtual world and a tangible world! Spend time in both and plan to:
Enjoy our beautiful land and
Enjoy your awesome grandkids
Watch your hockey star son lead his team to victory in the Avataq Cup
Take a Caribbean cruise with your BFF
The possibilites in a connected world are endless!
Student-centred technology rich-learning
I was reading Shelley Wright’s blog last night and I cried. She is a member of our eci831 class and a high school science teacher who experimented with adopting a technology-rich, student-centred approach to her teaching. (See her blog post, “taking the plunge”). After a two week trial she shared the results on her post, “the jury is in”. I cried for the girl in her class that experienced the joy of learning for possibly the first time in her school career; I cried for my son who dropped out of school after Grade 10 because he thought he couldn’t learn and in the traditional class environment he was right); I cried for my 11 year old granddaughter who is in Grade 6 and came home last week with a 90 average on her fall report card, including a 100 in computers, but she hates school so much that her mother has to argue with her everyday to get her out the door; and I cried for all the kids and adult learners like them who are being sidelined by a traditional approach to teaching and all their parents and grandparents who don’t know how to help their kids to be successful in school and their teachers who for one reason or another are afraid to try and change the way they teach.
Shelley’s experiment illustrates the kind of change in approaches to teaching that many of us would like to see more of–classrooms rich in the use of technology and students at the centre of the teaching and learning. The need for school reform and the role that the use of technology can play in supporting a more student-centred kind of teaching have been some of the ongoing themes of the dialogue in our eci831 class, so this is not new to most of you reading this. There are differences of opinion about the benefits of using Web 2.0 and other technology tools in teaching and we all agree that the use of technology isn’t a magic bullet for school reform but it certainly has the potential to positively change teaching and learning at all levels. Shelley Wright’s story has powerful lessons for all of us who are in the business of education.
There appears to be countless research findings that parallel Shelley’s experiences. I came across an older study that’s been around for more than 10 years, the Apple Classroom of Tomorrow (ACOT) study. The research examined how instruction changed over time in technology-rich classrooms and outlined a number of significant outcome for students. It showed that:
- Students’ absentee rate was 50% less, and the study groups had no dropouts compared with schools’ 30% overall rate.
- Although half of the students who joined ACOT as freshmen had not planned to go to college. Ninety per cent of them graduated and went on to college compared with 15% of the non-ACOT graduates.
- The ACOT graduating class in one school amassed 27 academic awards in addition to recognition for outstanding accomplishments in history, calculus, foreign language and writing.
The researchers also noted that a shift in instructional style occurred, from traditional to constructivist. The authors of the study believe that the shift takes place as teachers become expert technology users leading to new levels of confidence and willingness to experiment with instruction, however suggest that these changes will occur only if there is a concomitant change in teachers’ beliefs about their practice.
A more recent pilot in Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology demonstrated noticeable improvements in attendance and grades among marginalized college students studying Maths and Science at Seneca when new technology was adopted. The 30 year veteran teacher said that she had never seen such significant improvements in students’ understanding of math concepts. Check out this short video made by one of the students.
http://www.youtube.com/v/il-k65CFqpE?fs=1&hl=en_GB
Given a longer and more detailed search I am sure that I could discover many more research projects, pilots, experiments and testimonies about the benefits of technology-rich, student-centred classrooms. I have heard the stories from my eci831 classmates about the positive effects resulting from the changes that they are implementing in their class rooms and the benefits of using technology. My exposure to some of the literature and experts in technology and education that we have heard from this fall lead me to think that the findings of the ACOT experiment were not an anomaly. I am convinced that solid evidence exists for why our school systems from K-12 to post-secondary need to shift to more learner-centred models of education and why schools need to be generously supported for the creation of technology-rich learning environments. So why after so many years are we still debating the effectiveness of student-centred, technology-rich class rooms? Why are so many children and adult learners being left behind or pushed to the sidelines when we have evidence about how we can be more effective educators.
I don’t have an answer to that but I know that many individual educators are taking steps towards school and professional improvement and changing their beliefs about education; however there is a WE factor that needs to be considered. As another eci831 blogger, Shawna Stangel, wrote this week: “So the question I keep coming back to is . . . “What are WE going to do about it?” Yes, WE as a collective. It can begin with an individual but must end with us all, as we are all in this together”
WE as parents, grandparents, teachers, administrators, professors, researchers, politicians, policy makers, professional educators and trainers, are in this together and must talk to others, encourage and support the changes that WE want to see, our children, old and young deserve nothing less.
Online communities are people first
Why don’t people post comments?
Our Nunavut Arctic College community blog is in its second week of life and still no comments, people are however emailing me about the blog and making private comments. Interesting.
Reminds me of Angela Byrnes‘ blog post last week. She wrote in reference to a lack of comments on her class blogs : “I am finding this a little discouraging. I know that parents are reading the blogs because in informal conversations they have brought them up and talked about them, but they are not commenting.”
Although Angela is not setting out to build an online community her experience with a lack of response triggered me to reflect on the bigger challenge of how to encourage participation in online communities. Alec Couros did try to prepare me for the no-comment scenario so I was not surprised but I was still disappointed. I suppose that there are many reasons why people don’t leave comments to blogs or why building online communities is so challenging.
Sometimes a lack of response can be chalked up to people’s discomfort in the online world–they don’t know how to post, how to write for the online environment, or they don’t understand the protocols or etiquette of this foreign environment, or they fear that their comments will appear foolish or irrelevant. I think back to the beginning of this course and my own confusion and fears about blogging and commenting on my classmates blogs. I was afraid that I had nothing worthwhile to say and that I could not make a valuable contribution to the learning of others in the eci831 community. If I wrote something stupid–the whole world could see it. I am no longer fearful nor reluctant to blog and comment on others blogs. What caused the shift?
Some of the factors were: familiarity with the environment, developing a higher skill level in ICT, reading other educators’ blogs and their comments, discovering the power and excitement found in self-determined learning that lead to relevancy and authenticity in my learning, discovering that when I felt passionately about something, I did have something worthwhile to say, and that others found it interesting and noteworthy (recognition and influence). As time passed I also began connecting on a more personal and private level with some of my classmates which also encouraged me to share more. (feeling like I was a welcome member in our eci831 community).
How do you encourage participation in an online community? How do you create community? Is it possible to design for commitment in community? These are common questions in the online community world.
In their paper, Encouraging Contribution in Online Communities, Kraut and Resnick, describe a number of strategies for building online communities based on findings derived from research in the social sciences. They write, “To be successful, online communities need the people who participate in them to contribute the resources on which the group’s existence is built… We use theories from psychology and economics to identify techniques that can increase resource contributions from members, and also to identify common ways to go wrong.”
From a less academic perspective but equally as informative, Rich Millington, author of Online Community Manifesto, has lots of practical advice about starting and maintaining online communities. Underlying much of his advice is the absolute necessity to focus on people and relationships and to not simply convey information. He writes that the three things people want most out of an online community are:
1) Recognition amongst peers.
Help members think they can get increasing levels of recognition from those they consider their peers. This is by far the biggest motivator for anyone in any online community. The more you can create an environment that highlights contributions from members, the more successful your community will be.
2) Influence within the community.
People want to know what they did has made an impact. If you kick a ball and it doesn’t move, you don’t kick the ball anymore. You have to demonstrate the impact they can make. You have to give them increasing levels of power and influence to have this impact.
3) Sense of community.
This is about trust and feeling secure to express yourself within a group you know feels similar things to you. This is about finding the people like you, having inside jokes, self-disclosing information and being rewarded with a layer of emotional safety. This is achieved by attracting the right members, ensuring high levels of interactions, real-time meetings and soliciting self-disclosure.
My research, dialogues with my online community and reflection on my own experiences in online communities tell me that successful online communities don’t just happen and that they are first and foremost about people.
photo by Mike Shouldice, Rankin Inlet
