Week 5 and Week 6 (Part 1)

Looking at discussion forums for these two weeks. The tasks to complete are:

-Locate an example of an online forum and post to your blog a link to the forum with an assessment of the forum.
-Identify what aspects of community can be found.
-Interview a member of the forum you are looking at and obtain comments and ideas on how the forum might benefit from facilitation services - such as a coordinated event to help focus people around a particular issue, or the writing of a summary to close a thread in the forum.
-Write the findings into a blog post and send the link to the course email group.

I did find difficult to find a discussion forum where there was a sense of community. I have found that all the open forum I looked at in Yahoo! groups or Google groups were plagued with spam getting in the way of communication. I have applied to join a few of the closed forums, but out of 6 or 7 applications completed last week, I only received once answer to date. The group I have managed to join is "Educating Tomorrow" in Google groups.
Its description:
Educating Tomorrow's mission is to design and help implement best management practices for greening NYC's public schools. Our schools must take the lead in reducing our City's ecological footprint through environmental education and responsible practices, such as school-wide recycling."
However I do not get a feeling of community there. It does not seem to be any discussion taking place. It feels more like an information board with not replies posted to any messages.

I have had an idea last night and have contacted a group where participants are more likely to be interacting with each others. I will keep you updated!
I'll be late, but will get there...