Thoughts as class begins

In no particular order...

• My experience with online classes is mostly in structured systems (for me, WebCT and later Blackboard CE6, with a bit of Moodle). I'm really looking forward to experiencing the alternative, and to learning how these pieces/parts can be put together into a functioning course. So far, it looks _really_ different.
• Having each student maintain a blog seems to be a sharable form of journaling. I like this; journaling my way through a new learning experience forces me to articulate and document my experience, and it goes a long way toward helping me nail down the details of what I'm actually experiencing.
• Having said that, as near as I can tell, each of us is going to be blogging -- and is also expected to monitor the blogs of some 60 or 70-some-odd other classmates. I'm really intimidated by the sheer volume of content that might represent. Drinking from a fire hose?
• I understand (in theory, at least) how RSS feeds could be used to bring all these blogs to a central source so that we don't have to look at 60 or 70 different places every time we come online. From monitoring the conversation on the mailing list, I understand that some of my classmates are experimenting with a variety of different ways to do this. I really appreciate their efforts -- and I'm totally intimidated by what looks like a level of technological competence that is light years beyond my own. I've got a _lot_ to learn here! I'd like to learn it, too, but not right now -- first I need to get the basic class content in hand.
• I'll settle for smaller victories just now. I've used Blogger to set up blogs before, and I use RSS feeds as a customer by way of a feed reader (usually Google Reader). But I've never "closed the loop" by learning how to set up an RSS feed for one of my blogs. I just learned how to do that, and the truth is I'm feeling proud of having been able to add an RSS feed URL for my blog to my introduction on the home page for this class. I feel a little like a toddler who just walked all the way across the living room without holding anyone's hand, while the adults look on and smile...
  

Why am I here?

This blog is being created as part of the learning activities in "Facilitating Online Communities", an online course being offered through WikiEducators beginning 28 July, 2008. As near as I can understand it, the purpose of having each member of the class set up a blog is to serve something of a journaling function, to be shared with others in the class.

Why am I taking the class? I teach online courses (as well as courses of other types). I'm acutely aware of the importance of community in online classes, simply because of first-hand experience of both positive and negative examples. I like to think that my courses now have a pretty decent sense of community -- but what I've done, I've done mostly on the basis of instinct and trial-and-error. I don't have an organized sense of how to nurture and improve the online community in a class; I don't have an understanding of relevant theory; I don't know the research base. All of these things would probably help me to do a better job in my own classes.

I also spend a lot of time helping faculty teach better (I'm a faculty member at a university). A more formal knowledge of this topic would help me do a better job of helping _them_ nurture community in their classes.

I'm also interested in the whole "Web 2.0" phenomenon. While I've used many of the tools this class employs at one time or another, I've never participated in a class that uses them in quite this way. I'm hoping that by being a student in this context I'll gain a better understanding of how to be a teacher in this context.