Creating Online Communities

What is a community? What is a weblog? How can they be used together? Nancy White has done a great series of postings discussing these issues. Of particular interest is her taxonomy of three types of blogs - single blog centric, topic centric and community centric. Terry Anderson expands on her discussion to explore his relationship with Elgg and his use of Elgg to "generate community" in the MDE program. I am attempting a similar activity with a class of graduate studnts in the Masters in Communications Technology program here at the faculty of Extension at University of Alberta. The commitment of individuals to the "community" is demonstrated by their attention to the blog postings; if they don't come and contribute, there is no vitality to the community, in fact it isn't a community. Without vibrant and ongoing interactive exchanges there is nothing but stale blogs.