Eduspaces: the saga continues
There is still a lot of discussion revolving around the eventual disposition of eduspaces.net.
Overall, the predominant feeling I get from the discussions is one of sorrow. Terry Wassall, Joan Vinall-Cox, and Mark Pearson expressed this very well. We are likely losing a community that we all enjoyed and participated in. That isn’t easy. There is also possibly a feeling of betrayed trust (Graham Attwell), whether or not you may think that is justified.
I think some people are in a bad spot–students who are hosted on eduspaces and have not completed their terms, faculty members who might already be on holiday and “unwired”. Personally, having this happen during Christmas break was preferable. I have time to do something about it before the new term begins!
There are quite a few ideas floating about for moving the entire community, either to a new elgg installation or to another site
- http://www.mylearningspace.org
- http://classroom20.ning.com/
- http://www.ll4schools.co.uk
- http://www.college-cram.com/study/eduspace/
- http://ucpbl.aau.dk/
- Mark V. H. is considering the possibility of hosting the whole community, at least for a while.
This whole situation has been interesting. I was relatively unconcerned about moving *myself* (after all, there are many communities of instructional technology folks, and I will surely make new friends and get new inspiration at edublogs.org). I also had no real problems exporting my own text, although I was less happy about losing some valuable comments and messages. Those could not be exported; they could be saved in other ways.
I was most unhappy about losing my communities. I owned one and I was a member of one. The community I owned was used as a group blogging site by students in one of my senior level courses. We had a topic each week, and I blogged about it along with the students. My students had decided that they wanted the momentum of a group blog instead of several individual blogs. None of them had blogged before, so I think having a community provided some support that made them more comfortable with the whole idea! The community I was a member of had much information of a technical nature, and a great deal of the most valuable bits were in the comments! In fact, we often posted a question as the blog entry and received detailed answers as comments. We can’t export those comments.
But on the other hand, will I care about those comments in a year? When Moodle 1.9 has come, will comments on moodle 1.8 really be that important?? Maybe I should just be content with letting the river sweep me along? I already have close to a terrabyte of storage. And how many of those files do I really access on a regular basis? (Don’t ask; you know the answer). How many of my 2000 email messages should I be deleting as obsolete? (a bunch, a bunch).
So I am going to see how it all turns out. I enjoyed the time I spent on eduspaces; I think that experience changed me and how I look at virtual communities. Dave and Ben, I salute you!
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