My favorite hobby, when we are between semesters because it is so time consuming, I enjoy scrapbooking. I love arranging the pictures of my children in new ways and decorating the pages (i’m sure this sounds boring to the men in the class…LOL) to reflect the mood of the day. This is why for the group I chose to join a scrapbook discussion board. I looked at a few and chose to peruse www.creativekeepsakes.com and www.scrapgirls.com. Both of these sites have different discussion boards for users to go through different topics such as problems with tools, ideas, and new ways to use the tools most scrapbookers have. I joined both approximately three weeks ago. I chose these two because they had the most to offer in terms of different disucssions as well as more ideas presented than the others.
In this discussion board it is easy to assimilate into the group, every person is accepted. The reason I know this is the case because I had a question on a post concerning a card idea someone had posted. A couple days later the author of the post emailed me and we discussed the tools used and she saw sweet and easy to talk to. There were a couple other posts I posted and I was never confronted or put down for what I said.
There were never any issues or problems while I was part of this online community. In fact, two of the people I talked to I continue to communicate with then outside of the discussion board about things other than scrapbooking!! They both live in Oregon and have lives that are similar to mine so we sort of became “internet buddies.” LOL. As stated in Woods and Smith, “Being part of a virtual community means more than merely having a group of people communicating online.” (page 127) Being a part of the scrapbook community helped me to find two women who could possibly become good friends of mine. We all want to be a part of a group or social network, belonging to these two discussion boards was enjoyable.
Another part of the discussion board concerns problems with tools or different ways to use the tools most scrapbookers already posess. I have a cricut machine which is a machine that cuts shapes out. There are many different cartridges you can purchase separately, I love this! Anyway, one post had different ideas on how to combine some of the shapes I already had, it was wonderful!!
I can honestly say I not only learned some things from this assignment, and I also plan on continuing to check the discussion board regularly for ideas and questions concerning scrapbooking.
