The Friday Reflection!

The March of the Wind Mills!
Gunfleet Sands off Clacton on a warm January Day!

First Week of Online Community Projects for 2013!

By +Philip Spalding 

Have spent the last week running the Haverhill Online Learning Community's Maths for Parents Week.   The materials have been shared through Facebook groups such as the local residents associations, the Selling and Free Page, Haverhill Business Group.  A search for Google + users has also taken place and all have been invited to join and contribute. 

After all this effort was only when I emailed one of the Advanced Skills Maths Teachers in Ipswich to aquaint him with the site that I discovered a flaw in the cunning plan.  Fully supportive as he was, he had one question "How do I join?".    Feeling a little puzzled  I wondered what  Don Quoxite moment I had been guilty of, had I been tilting at windmills in my desire to build the community (slight reference to the Wind Turbines in the photograph).  

Taking a little step back, I went to the home page of the page of the website!  What was I missing?  Looking at the so called obvious links of Contact Us, Visit the Google + Community, Facebook and Google Group pages I scratched by head for a few seconds.  They were obviously not doing their job!  Looking again at the question "How do I join?" a slight ray of  light seemed to be there.  Now on the front page of the website (https://sites.google.com/a/kritirecharge2012.co.uk/haverhill-online-learning-community/home) are the words JOIN BY Clicking Here with an embedded web link.  The sidebar also has new a web link to the Google + Community preceded by the word "join", which will take people to the community page where they can join! 

A few SlideSpeech demos, or a You Tube Video may also be needed since the sidebar has started to become a little full!  So hopefully four little words are the solution. Time will tell!  

Will need to get out there and also talk to community groups as well.  The community may have access to the internet but there is not necessarily an awareness of it's full potential.  Facebook for instance may not be the best medium to promote a community based group such as the Haverhill Online Learning Community!  Social media has it's limitations for conversion of contacts to participants!  Recently noticed that a lot of the people offering locally their services as Twitter media consultants have now changed their business activity descriptions to Marketing again!  Difficult to make a living when everybody can do itself, or as usual with local markets word of mouth does your twitter function as it has always done so!

Still it is the end of the Christmas and New Year holiday period.  The Haverhill Online Learning Community is out there!  The field has been built, (Kevin Costner reference) will they come?  Not going to stop making links and contacts, a community of 30 or so active members by mid-February is the first goal!  If you would like to participate, JOIN BY Clicking Here.  Upcoming events are listed in our Calendar (https://sites.google.com/a/kritirecharge2012.co.uk/haverhill-online-learning-community/calendar).  Look forward to speaking to you in the community page!