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FREE ONLINE COMMUNITY-BUILDING
SERVICE ATTRACTING BIG CROWD OF
EDUCATORS
Since
launching its online
community-building services in
November 2002, an innovative company
called LearningTimes Network (LTN)
has brought together 3,000 educators
and growing (at press time) inside
its flagship, free-to-join
"open-community for education-minded
people," located at
www.learningtimes.org.
"We have exceeded our
expectations in terms of growth,"
says Founder and Executive Producer
Jonathan Finkelstein, who previously
co-founded HorizonLive, Inc., a
provider of a platform for live
teaching, learning, interaction, and
collaboration over the Internet.
Finkelstein calls the
LearningTimes free community "an
online, living, breathing and
growing location where people are
organizing their thoughts, educating
each other, and simply communicating
within their own associations or
schools or affinity groups." Members
have access to a host of online
tools for communicating with each
other, such as live and asynchronous
discussion forums, learning blogs,
file sharing capabilities, listservs,
meeting rooms, voice chat, voice
e-mail, instant messaging and more.
Extensive help menus with feature
tours of these tools are also
provided.
Online Conferencing Production
Services
Additionally, through its
www.learningtimes.net
arm, LTN is a producer of focused,
member-driven online communities
that often provide fee-based
services for the education and
training sectors. This LTN
production service includes
supporting a rapidly growing trend
in the online teaching and learning
arena - hosting and developing
sophisticated online conferences and
workshops that feature Web casts and
other supportive online asynchronous
and synchronous tools. For example,
LTN recently hosted the Illinois
Online Conference, held entirely on
the Internet and attended by more
than 250 educators. The Illinois
Online Conference featured
interactive Web casts with three
keynote speakers, over 80
presentations and discussions based
on the topics of: Innovation,
Technology, Leadership, Teaching and
Learning, and Current Issues in
Education.
To date LTN has built 28 online
learning communities for a variety
of education and training clients,
servicing more than 13,000 members
combined.
Cool Tools
Each community offers the ability
to organize and access workshop
materials; to host live Web casts
for up to 1,000 people; post and
review Web cast archives; facilitate
asynchronous text and voice based
discussions; use 2-way VoIP based
live collaboration areas with
application sharing, virtual
whiteboards, and image import tools
to interact with instructors or with
groups of colleagues; and to
communicate via integrated instant
messenger, listserv and text- or
voice-based e-mail.
Other LearningTimes Network
communities use Learning
Times-enhanced chat tools,
integrated virtual classrooms or
telephone-based Web conferencing
solutions, depending on the purpose
of the community. LearningTimes
offers training, support, and live
Web cast production services for
community tutorials and activities.
The company also provides complete
marketing, outreach, e-commerce
registration and communication
services.
Library Online Conference Coming
in October
On October 20-24, LTN will host a
Library Online Conference, which, in
addition to five days of live
presentations with library leaders
and keynote speakers, will include a
year-round online collaboration
space for and by librarians and
information professionals, with live
collaboration spaces for meetings
with colleagues, frequent Web casts
on timely topics, ongoing dialogues
with thought leaders, and
just-in-time access to indispensable
people and content.
Attending Your Next Conference
from Your Desktop
"One of the reasons why
LearningTimes is growing so fast is
that people are starved for
professional interaction," adds
Finkelstein. "Especially with
budgets being cut, the ability to
attend conferences and workshops has
been curtailed, and there are signs
that this will continue through the
coming year. I think people are
pleased to interact with peers
without leaving their desks, which
many people aren’t able to do for
long periods of time to travel.
"We are trying to build momentum
through a series of activities that
build off one another," Finkelstein
continues. "With time-based Web
casts, for instance, it is not like
we are just sending out a note
saying ‘come visit our community;’
we are saying ‘come visit our
community at 1 o’clock on Tuesday
for an interactive Web cast about
how you might use digital games in
online education.’ In the process,
we are giving people a very
discreet, time-based reason to be
there, and we are letting them know
that even that activity is going to
be available in a recorded format
where they still have the ability to
interact with people. So I think the
idea that they are going to be able
to congregate with peers, and be
able to interact with them at
specific times, is one of the things
that has helped it grow." |
