I have been "observing" idealist.org as a means for personal connection as well as a way to to involved in an online community. Throughout my time online, I have been frustrated that this site for it is stil in its infancy, further I have been receiving more and more snail mail related my areas of interest. It very well could be a coincidence, but am still leary of the intent of the site.
I still like the idea of connecting to people of like mind and as a means to connect to voluntary opportunities outside of the virtual world.
There is a start up meeting right up the street from me this Tuesday, unfortunately, I am not able to attend. I was supposed to observe community online and now the site is moving to a real vs virtual environment and I am sad that I cannot connect in real life. Yet, if there is one opportunity, there is probably another. This is how great things happen.
I loved it!
It was great to have our class on Second Life. Sure, there were glitches such as following Super Scott while flyng around the island, but overall I feel that this venue holds great potential.
As far as utilizing this site for the classes I administer, it would be chaos based the level of technical saavy of over 800 students! Most students would excel, yet there are still students who struggle with logging into WebCT (or so it seems). Amy P and I are planning on showing Second Life to we our director to find out her thoughts
There is not a lot of direct connecting online in Idealist.org. There are a few great Blogs of some of the users who promote technology for educational purposes. There are also groups who have separate sites and blogs to connect, e.g. http://www.chicagoidealist.blogspot.com/
There is a lack of direct connectionson Idealist, but keep in mind that Idealist.org is a new site. The connections are growing and soon the connections amongst the "struggle" of connections will be made. I don't think that it's bad that the connections are not direct, I think it is just as aspect of a new venue.