My previous post discussed a number of the shortcomings of the Contentology.com website. Going through the site and criticizing it as harshly as I did made me take another look at our own site. It, too, has shortcomings.
So, in the spirit of mea culpa, let me list some of the problems I see with Participo.

1. What does “Participo” mean? Why does this site exist?
   “Participo” is a Latin word, meaning “to share with a person; to cause a person to share”. Guy Dickinson wanted (wants) to create a site to share his interest and excitement about the constantly-changing sphere of eLearning and Knowledge Management. He recruited a couple of people with similar interests to contribute reports of their websufing in the world of learning.
2. Who are the authors? Why should I care what they have to say?
   Paticipo has been up and running for more than half-a-year now, and its time for a refitting. One of the first things needed on the site is author bios. The main author, signing his entries as “guy”, is Guy Dickinson, an instructional designer based in Manchester, UK. “evano” is the posting name of evan orensky, a multimedia developer and writer, based in Baltimore, US. A site re-design is imminent, but these capsule intros might hold readers till then.
3. How is your site organized?
   The front page of the site contains the full text of the four most recent entries in reverse chronological order. Following that are excerpts of the next four entries. The body of each entry is followed by the results of a Google search for documents related to the entry, then a listing of other related articles on the Participo site. Both these searches are powered by the Google Web APIs. Following the searches are comments on the entries posted by our readers or by the authors. Everyone is welcome to comment: Participo is meant to be a discussion. The front page is also home to a site search tool, and a series of syndicated feeds related to our four topics of entries: Thought, Technology, Design and Business.
4. What are the four sections? What do the names mean?
   Pretty self-explanatory, we thought, but just in case they’re not: Thought is a place for articles and discussion of ideas and theory related to eLearning or education in general; Technology is our area for reviews and previews and news of the tools and technologies available for eLearning creation and participation; Design is where we critique and theorize on the application of theory and technology to education; Business is the location for discussion and presentation of business-related news and information relating to the practice of eLearning and knowledge management.
5. What else can I expect from this site?
   We’re not exactly sure… I mean, we have a lot of ideas and plans (discussion boards, excerpts from books published by authors we know, sample courses from working eLearning developers…), but we’d like to hear from our readers. What would you like to see? What questions do you have about the site? What do you like? What is a waste of your time? What would help you in your work?

Please post any ideas or comments using the “add a comment” link below this article. Thanks for reading.