Periodic Fable

As you might expect, I am a daily user of forums. My favourites are a private board for a group of about a dozen e-learning consultants (we used to work together) and a hobby board, where I am in a “team” of 10. Breaking up a community into groups of about this size makes it much more manageable and personal to interact.

This week though, there have been a variety of crises striking my forum-mates, with serious health issues striking at all ages from brand new babies to elderly grandparents. We offer one another support, and I guess it’s not that much different in effectiveness from getting on the phone to a friend.

I have tutored courses with students from around the world and run comunities with members worldwide and it seemed like whenever there was a major world incident I know someone caught up in it. From the serious – 9/11 and the Bali bombings spring to mind, to the silly – a fellow member of a forum is a relative of one of the current Big Brother contestants! (I don’t watch it!)