Describing what we have ended up doing

Both secondary school and community learning classes begin again today and we start our last Web2.0 activities of this funding year. The latest activities reflect the circuitous route through which our 'community of development' has evolved. It contains all the benefits of a community of practice (sharing enthusiams, sharing tacit knowledge, identifying mind-focussing deadlines, etc) but with pre-defined outcomes in terms of materials or skills/knowledge levels and (in our case) wider benefits to the learners taking part in the activities.
Our work has grown from an original Aimhigher-funded project on the contribution of libraries to enterprise skills and thus this week with a new partner school each group of Web2.0 learners will compare search engines and IM services (comparing their results with JD Power ratings) but the learners will do it as a social enterprise business plan-based project. They may also gain pre-negotiated enterprise outcome rewards (money) or competence certificates. Next week's groups will compare wiki software and assess the sustainability.
Thus typically a quadplay of:

• partners across a range of organisations working together for mutual support
• shared advocacy role to other stakeholders in partner organisations
• outcomes in terms of written material or stored knowledge/warnings
• real learning and enterprise activities beyond using or testing Web2.0

I will need to articulate this much more clearly before describing it on wider and scarier stage at the EDEN 2007 Annual Conference