Splicing information and social relations to suite the needs of different situations is increasingly important. The fields of learning and development have not yet been transformed to the online environment. The combination of learning/knowledge analytics, data visualization, and activity streams provide, I think, a sufficient basis for educators to begin planning for a post-course view of education.
ednak is a completely free, community-supported network. The core focus of the network is sharing ideas and insights with other online faculty. ednak features threads, videos, software reviews, and the latest industry news for online educators.
I'm interested that when Michael Wesch or Howard Rheingold undertake this sort of social/distributed teaching, they rely quite heavily on RAs to pick u the slack and fill in the gaps. Perhaps that where I'm going wrong, expecting the students to achieve this sort of outcome with insufficient scaffolding.
B. Roos. Proceedings of EDEN 10th Anniversary Conference - Learning Without limits. Developing the Next Generation of Education, Stockholm, Sweden., (2001)