As social software tools are increasingly adopted in education, we've moved past the initial period and now face tougher questions on how these tools may be most effectively used. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach? Where are the gaps? What practices point to a genuinely new approach to learning?

On the one hand, students may now be becoming more used to the idea of blogs for classes. This is my (Jon's) experience. There have been far fewer technical and other problems setting up blogs and getting students to write them in the classes I'm teaching this semester compared to the last two semesters. And I just conducted a mini-evaluation for my two classes, focussing particularly on the use of blogs, and was pleasantly surprised to see that they were uniformly popular. The one things they didn't like so much was commenting on each others' blogs.

In SCoPE, an online international educator community hosted by Simon Fraser University, we're exploring ways that social software can enrich community life for members. (We have more questions than answers!) And to prepare for NV, Sylvia scheduled a 2-week seminar discussion: Blogging to Enhance Learning Experiences. Several interesting themes have emerged through that discussion.

BIG Qs: Educator Community

• How do we take full advantage of social software to make an educator community more loosely boundaried?
• There are individual preferences for aggregating and remixing, but are there community preferences?

BIG Qs: Enhancing Learning Experiences

• What makes a successful student blog?
• How do instructors design for collaboration?
• Is there danger of a new tools, old rules trend?