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"Social networking software sites are often mistakenly called learning communities, betraying a significant lack of agreement or concern for what actually constitutes a community. However, social networking sites are being used by teachers to engage students in dynamic ways, and by learners as vehicles for constructing their own, very personal learning environments and communities. This paper draws on lessons we have learned about building personal learning environments and virtual communities from our research and experience in formal and non-formal learning environments. It addresses the key questions of how can we construct, maintain and usher out communities, who joins communities, and what characteristics of communities seem to be shared across learning environments. The paper also questions whether the label "community" is actually a failed metaphor for something that seems to be much too dynamic and elusive to capture with a single construct. "

This is a subject that deserves some thought. For the most part, online conferences (and online strands of face-to-face) seem to be perceived as (and often subtly created as) alternative to the "real thing" that are inferior but better-than-nothing. Reminds me of the way distance education and online learning (mostly) used to be seen the same way in comparison to their face-to-face counterparts...

This is a subject that deserves some thought. For the most part, online conferences (and online strands of face-to-face) seem to be perceived as (and often subtly created as) alternative to the "real thing" that are inferior but better-than-nothing. Reminds me of the way distance education and online learning (mostly) used to be seen the same way in comparison to their face-to-face counterparts...