As posted in the discussion of the demise of EduSpaces
Elgg created me as a blogger, and gave me a space that I had nowhere else, a space where I could write about what fascinated me and actually receive responses that weren't blank stares and dismissals, a space where I didn't have to dumb-down my thinking and musing. I have "Friends" who feel like real friends, and I have corresponded directly with some and even met one. My sense of the world opened up because of Elgg, and I found the Community Blog structure a real help for a course I ran a number of times. (Way better than Blogger, but that's another story.)
I am sad that EduSpaces, formerly called Elgg, is going. I believe it had a special space in the theoretical and practical post-secondary educational use of the web. It was ahead of its time in many aspects, especially with its distributed social network, and its educational portfolio function. In the Community blog I used for courses, students provided their pictures or images to represent themselves, which made recognizing the author of an individual post visual and easy. The ability to add files, made it useful for student work being "handed in" and for MP3s being added for oral/aural work.
I am grateful to Dave and Ben, the volunteers who made it possible, and allowed me the space to grow.
The only constant is change, and this seems especially true in the web world.
