I had a chat session with Sian on Monday on my assignment topic – my ideas were fuzzy at the beginning of the chat but started to take shape during our chat.
One thing I was clear about. I want to take a non-linear (non-assembly line) approach to how I would present my essay – similar to the approach I used for Davidsfarm. As for a topic, I thought about doing something related to virtual communities. By the end of my chat with Sian my topic area took shape as – Learning from informal educational online communities. My definition of 'educational' would be broad – to capture those online communities whose intent may not formally be educational but whose members share information, tips and learning. I thought that Sarah P.'s quilting community and John's online music community were good examples of that as well as the 'How-to' videos in Davidsfarm.
What struck me about the virtual ethnographies that we did about virtual communities was the wide-range of types of communites – from those which are simply a network of individuals who share some utilitarian need and are not really a community – to those which illustrate a range of support and intimacies among members. It is the latter type of virtual community I hope to focus on and see what virtual features members use that encourage the sharing of knowledge. And what formal online educational communities can learn from them.
I hope to get Sarah and John's permission to use their ethnographies as exemplars but I also hope to find other exemplars. Ideas from anyone are welcome.
