Hi Gina and Everyone,

I'm responding to the question of how to build online community. I think
the biggest ingredient is motivation. I'm thinking of some teen-agers in
my neighborhood. For a while they were online all the time, day and night,
sneaking online at 3 a.m. to the despair of their parents, because they
had an intense form of community in their chatrooms that included kids
from all over the world. (Of course, there was a big motivator here -
hormones!) As these kids got driver's licences, things changed. They
didn't need the online community as much, because they weren't as isolated.

My point is, our learners don't need to have online communities, or cell
phone communities, or whatever, right now if they can go to school. If the
bird flu scenario David describes occurs, we will be a lot more isolated
than we are right now, and our motivation to find other modes of community
will be heightened. That motivation might help overcome resistance to the
potentially embarrassing tech support phone call, plus, you might have the
sense that others around you are doing the same thing, which is reassuring.

Marian Thacher
Outreach & Technical ASsistance Network
Sacramento, CA

"The Technology &amp;  Literacy Discussion List" <technology at dev.nifl.gov>
on Tuesday, November 22, 2005 at 8:48 AM -0800 wrote:

>So in answer to your question: what's missing in our current systems? I

>would respond: a strong virtual community that can sustain the learner

>through periods of physical separation, or at least until the learner

>develops a sense of virtual identity & of 'being' online. I would LOVE

>to do some research on this: what kinds of activities create a sense of

>community online? There's been quite a bit done in this area for

>postsecondary learners, but what's effective for literacy learners? I

>think we need to go beyond the notion of just creating an "online

>learning community" (lots on that) -- we need to research strategies

>that will bring the literacy learner's existing community (maybe just

>the family during a quarantine) into the fold. Stream of conciousness

>here: I think we need to find ways to overlap the learner's current

>community with their learning community. This, of course, is not just

>true for distance learning modalities but for any kind of literacy

>learning venture. But we will have to think outside the box to make this

>work for distance education.