Virtual Communities

Virtual Classrooms

Last year, I got involved with MediaOne at my vocational technical high school. It is a web space provided free to Massachusetts public schools. As I read this week's coursework, I realized MediaOne falls into the category of a virtual classroom, albeit a primitive one.

MediaOne provides free web storage to students, and allows teachers to set up a web site. I say it's primitive, because it isn't set up well for interactive use, but rather is structured for posting announcements and depositing assignments. A good first step, but, again, rather primitive compared to a true virtual classroom.

Eventually, I gave up on MediaOne. One reason was reliability. The servers seemed to have a lot of problems, but I must assume this has been resolved. The other reason was practical; the site was cumbersome, requiring passwords be issued to all students and login authorizations were highly controlled. This is for obvious security reasons, but also precluded extensive use on my part because I have a high number of students coming and going on a quick rotation basis.

My online courses at UMass Boston have opened my eyes to what's truly possible when it comes to virtual classrooms. My participation in live classroom sessions has been a tremendous eye-opener, as has been the rest of the online classroom experience.

In particular, my current course - Media and Community Building - has exposed me to tremendous possibilities. It is now clear that we are in the midst of rapid technological change that will be having a major impact over the years ahead. Blogs. Wikis. Video spaces. Social spaces. Online communities. It is all unfolding very quickly, redefining the landscape.

Johnson (Interface Culture) writes about Doug Engelbert changing our view of cyberspace when he demonstrated his first graphic interface. It appears to me that technology is now changing our view of community, by creating familiar, social environments in the cyberspace that Engelebert blasted open.

I like it!