Second Life

My experience in Second Life was short & I was a bit uncoordinated: my Avatar was unpredictable to say the least. The people I met there were all very helpful and friendly. It was interesting teleporting to the Online Therapy Institute. Although I was definitely a “newbie” I could see the development of communities and how useful these communities could be. Jo was very interesting explaining how some people liked the anonymity of Second Life when seeking therapy and how eventually therapy sessions would be held in Second Life.
A few years ago a visiting Educator from Australia gave a lecture & talked about Second Life as a teaching platform. I can’t remember the Teaching Institute he was from but I do remember him telling us about the Institute buying land in Second Life & using it for their students. The Hospitality students set up a project where they had to design a hotel: create the gardens, swimming pool etc, do the interior decorating etc. These students had to start from the beginning and carry the project through to an operating hotel. This was a great teaching tool & a wonderful experience for the students: they could make mistakes, but they were easy to correct & didn’t cost the employer anything.
These students had first-hand experience of what it was like to design and operate a hotel so they were well equipped to go out & do the same thing in real life.
This is a platform where people can learn whatever they want to, experience the real thing & perfect the design or task first hand, then when they go to the real world they are competent and confident.
I still have a lot to learn about Second Life but think it is a great learning platform & will be used more for education in the future.
I see facilitation in Second Life as a cooperative process where people get to know each other & what each person is interested in. Then if someone & wants to know something about a particular site or topic they would be directed to the person who knows about that topic.

Community Facilitator Interview

I have posted the interview with a Community Facilitator to blip .tv. Click Facilitator Interview to listen.

Second Life names

My Second Life name is Gilly Muggins.

Mini conference Proposal

I recorded an interview with a Community Facilitator.
For the mini conference I would like other FOC participants and anyone else who is interested to listen to the interview and then we will discuss if the interview has changed our perceived role of a facilitator, or if facilitation in the wider community has a different role to that in educational organisations.
This event will take approximately an hour and the venue will be skype,
discussion open to everyone.
Time 8am Thursday 6th November(NZ DST) 7pm Wednesday 5th November UTC

FOC as a blogging network

The Facilitating Online Communities course does connect to a wider network; people who are interested in facilitating online have contributed either through a blog or through the e-mail forum, or both. Many people are not enrolled in this course but contribute because they are interested.
This blogging network has a conscientious facilitator who is positive, very helpful and knowledgeable.

I have helped to develop this network by posting to my blog my ideas and thoughts about Facilitating Online and by reading resources and other people’s blogs, and commenting on other blogs.

A blogging network can grow very quickly; this could be an advantage to the Online Community because more people are contributing and members have different viewpoints so individual perspectives become more diverse. If the network grows too much it could be a disadvantage because one member cannot communicate with all other members so chooses to communicate with others who have similar viewpoints or interests. This could result in smaller groups with less diverse viewpoints, so the communication and learning would be limited.

Blogospheres

A blogosphere is a term used to describe all blogs which are grouped together under one “umbrella” as a blogging network (has many blogs and many contributors).


I read the Canadian blogosphere. The name indicates to me it would cover all things Canadian but was mainly political. Within the Canadian blogosphere were smaller groups of blogs based on political views, party affiliations & physical location for example Paul Martin's blog.

Blogs were used to both defend and attack politicians by journalists like Rick Mercer and others.

I suppose these could be classed as “satellite” blogging networks they have their own smaller groups but are still part of the larger blogosphere.

The largest “satellite” group was the “Blogging Tories” (link)which had 300 blogs & 3,000 readers.

A poll taken in 2005 stated that 42% of Canadians had read a blog in the previous 3 months. That figure, I think, would have doubled by now. Blogging networks are very popular and a convenient way to keep up-to-date with issues or topics you are interested in.