My blog this week has focused on the idea of community, having been part of some very different communities recently this is very real to me. I have felt very much part of the ededc community and I been part of the edcMooc community – which felt quite soulless at times, to the #edcmooc on twitter which inspired feelings of community through shared activity and response. I have left my own community with friends and family and visited a new community with an entirely different set of rules and cultural references. Then I began to dip my toe into an online community of cyclists obsessed with the weight of bike parts – it has been a strange old week!!!!!
It makes me question what is a community and what makes one belong,
I felt I belonged in my home community, in the ededc community and in the #edcmooc community, I was beginning to become part of the community in Kenya and part of the edcMooc community, I didn’t belong in the Weght Weenies community. When I dissected my feelings of community it appears to be based on not only my engagement but the responses. In my own community with family and friends I give and receive feedback. As part of ededc I commented on others blogs and they on mine and we had chatted in real time through Skype. In twitter I was commenting and gaining responses. The edmooc course and Kenya – I still felt very new and the interactions I had were less engaging, which is quite surprising for Kenya as I was very engaged in many things I took part in but I always felt like a visitor. However I did feel a sense of community with the people I travelled with which was a new group of people to me. I have no sense of community with the Weight Weenies group because as yet, I have not contributed just observed.
So what is actually a community? It has to be more than a collection of people who are doing the same thing?
