An Interactive Learning Design Blog

An Interactive Learning Design Blog

Jul 14, 2007

Intentional Learning Communities are not always

Communities, that is. Inspiration Software launched their Inspired Learning Community site at NECC.
A month later, there are over 144 lessons posted on the site, which is impressive. What intrigues me is that there are exactly two posts on the bulletin board.
I see this juxtaposition of success and failure time after time in the community building efforts of educational software companies.
The stated goal is usually to build a community of teachers who share a common passion in the software the company sells. In the Eschool article that accompanied its roll out, we read that Mona Westhaver, Inspiration's president and co-founder said "Now, with our new online community, we are offering educators a community where they can inspire one another."
But the framework of the site makes it clear to users that the primary objective is to encourage them to create free content for your site. It's easy to do . You can post all by yourself, in the privacy of your home.
But how do you start a dialogue when there's no one there? That's not so easy to do.
And teachers, being smart, get the message on what's important. And so 144 uploads, 2 posts.
I wonder how many posts there will be at the end of August?

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