This resource has been drawn from discussions in the General Forum of the Australian Flexible Learning Community during the period July 2002 to December 2004. Many thanks to all who contributed.

I'm currently establishing an electronic network (which will hopefully become a CoP) for those teaching in the literacy field and have an interest in innovative ways to integrate new technologies into their teaching practice, and associated issues.

I'm interested to hear from anyone who knows of good free tools that we could use. I'm aware of MC2 but am unsure whether having to actually go to a site is as successful as a simple listserv.

When this sort of question came up on the General Forum, everyone knew that for the one person who posted it, there were dozen others wanting to know the same thing. It’s a simple question for which the answer is not quite so simple.

I've been involved with many electronic networks in my time and have come across some very interesting tools, environments and platforms. The latest one that consumes a great deal of my working day is Plone, a customised out-of-the-box portal for sharing web spaces for CoPs. Prior to that I was heavily engaged in the use of WebCT and TLM and the Janison Toolbox.

One of the great things available for a few of the private communities here in the AFL Community is the automatic emailing that 'pushes' the messages to our desktops. The one we use for the Flexible Learning Leaders now reaches over 100 mailboxes and I know that, in the opinion of many of us, it is THE best way to ensure that everyone has access to the message. Of course, it does not ensure that we read it, respond to it or do anything with the information contained within it.

The system is great, as you can reply to it from your email. Of course many of us have to manage this traffic by filtering them off to sub categories in our email or printing for reading offline. But what they do is keep us in touch with one another.

In Victoria we still find a great deal of use from our own mailing list that reaches our 39 FLL members. This can be a little more discreet so that we don't unnecessarily clog up the wider FLLs list. The Victorian email list for FLLs is actually just a group list, not automated. Because it’s a relatively small group that’s fine. I think there MAY also be something about knowing that a real person has sent an email rather than it being computer mediated, at least it is a little less likley to be filtered out.)

We are also building some shared web spaces for our Victorian CoPs using open source ware. These will assist in providing a wide spectrum of asynchronous discussions as well as a place to share the latest resources, knowledge captured, and up-to-date information that have specific relevance for Victorian RTOs.

One of the comments made about forums was that although many may go to the web site to read the dialogue, some may be put off initiating conversations by having to log in rather than just send off a quick email. Where this is the case the forum becomes a conversation dominated by a few very active voices with no way of knowing how many people with good things to say are not logging on. A common response was along the lines of this posting.

I like being able to use a discussion forum, with the option of having emails sent to my mail box and also access a chat room. The sense of immediacy created by the synchronous communication of CHAT is an important factor in developing community and it is certainly useful for decision making.

I think it is important that these tools are opt in or out so that those who hate getting lots of email don't have to choose that option. The national FLL group had extensive discussion about this issue of push ( to email in box) or pull (to website) for communication and was pretty evenly split, with very strong preferences, so tools that offer the individual choice are great.

Interestingly there was virtually no mention of the various other free tools online such as Yahoo groups, which offer similar functionality but with the distraction of advertising. One contributor did offer the comment that…

… groupcare is useful as the ads are in Danish so not as intrusive for me. http://portal.groupcare.dk/?lang=en

Listserves weren’t everyone’s favourite. They were recognised by contributors as being an effective discussion tool however there were a few reservations. These are summed up neatly by this posting. 

I am on a literacy listserve that I do read from time to time. Messages from this listserve are recognisable and if the subject is of interest to me, I’ll read further. However, it generally becomes a low priority activity, given my time constraints and workload. An aspect of this tool is that you can instantly ‘lurk and learn’ but to ‘lurk, respond and learn’ is so much more effective. Oh, it’s a bit bland too, says she who is immersed in ‘colour, sound and the unexpected’ of online delivery!

The issue of overload came up again when group emails were suggested.

I have been a participant in an online course that used the group email technique but was utterly overwhelmed by the constant rate of messaging.

Although it wasn’t the final comment on this topic, the following is a perfect summary of the sentiments of the discussion.

I know some will say it’s not the technology – it’s the people that make a successful community of practice, but boy, suitable or unsuitable technology support can make a big difference.

Indeed!