Online Communities/Tools

From JamesWiki

Some of the community-building tools available on the internet:

Surely incomplete and badly organized. Feel free to add/edit/link/wikify or hit the talk page.

• Messaging
  • Email
  • IM
  • Social Messaging (Twitter, laconi.ca)
  • Chat
  • VoIP (Skype, etc.)
• Content
  • Blogs
  • Wikis
  • Social Bookmarking (Digg, Del.icio.us)
• Discussion
  • Forums
  • Newsgroups
• Networking
  • Social Networking (Facebook, Ning)
• Site (RSS) Feeds

Contents 1 Caveats 1.1 Access 1.2 Accessibility 1.3 Moderation

[edit] Caveats

[edit] Access

As with any online tool, remember that not all students may be able to access the communities outside of school, or, possibly, while at school. If you require students to use any of these tools, you or your school may be legally required to provide access to them. Does your school have computer labs that are available before, during, and after the school day? Are there computers available in the library? Classrooms? Be sure access is readily available and, if student's needs cannot be met through what is available, be flexible.

[edit] Accessibility

Schools, both public and private, are required to meet federal accessibility standards, and this includes web tools. Laws from sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act apply to material available on the web (and on paper) and require material be available to students in a form they can use.

Many web tools produce pages that meet accessibility guidelines, some do not. The issue is usually not with the type of tool (ie: blog, wiki, etc) but with the specific software (ie: WordPress, Blogger). If a tool is not accessible, talk to your school's IT staff to adapt the current software or move to new software that is.

[edit] Moderation

User-generated content must be moderated. This is as true in schools as it is outside of schools. Users may post inappropriate even illegal material which must be removed. Some conversations can become "flame wars," or traded personal insults with no value. On publicly accessible web sites, spam is always a concern.

While you must actively read and monitor the content created with these tools, it is not necessary to carefully evaluate each post if you provide a mechanism for students to "report" or "flag" content for your attention.

However, if you are too limiting in what you allow students to create, they will not engage with the community via the tools.

For example: you provide a forum for your history class to discuss material and assignments. Here are three possible situations:

1. A student asks a specific question about material on an assignment and gets a response from another student.
2. A student starts a popular topic about the upcoming basketball game.
3. A student answers another student's question with an insult or a link to an illegal site.

In the first case, the students are reaching out and using their network and the tools available to gain knowledge. That is a good thing.

In the second case, the students are engaging their community and building connections and familiarity, also a good thing. Only if the topic turns to insults or flames should it be stopped. (Though, if it was posted in the "18th Century" forum, perhaps it should be moved to a "general" forum.)

In the third case, moderation is obviously required. Removing the offending post, or the content of the post, is appropriate, as long as you are consistent.