Communication, reciprocity and the like

It's rather ironic that we're enrolled in a Web 2.0 class. Much of the excitement about Web 2.0, is connectivity and facilitation of collaboration. We just completed papers on communities of practice which required we observe, attempt to participate in and comment on the types of interaction we noted online. How many papers have we read marveling on how the web has bridged gaps between continents, cultures, language and time zones? We are as connected as we want or do not want to be. In this class, however, it seems as though we are experiencing "failure to launch". Perhaps, I'm out of the loop since so far, my attempts to tweet to the class hashtag has not met with much success. I've been told that Twitter can be frustrating that way and that I should continue to tweet until the post shows up. I have floated around and visited many of my classmates blogs and left posts on several. Other than our instructor, who's been dedicated to encouraging us all by leaving comments on almost every post, I've had two classmates view and comment on posts of mine over the past five weeks. Doesn't reciprocity count? Dr. Dennen has even addressed this in the class blog, yet very little "comment kindness" has resulted. Why not? At one point, I theorized that the learning curve for many of us has been rather steep which has left some of us with little brain power and time to spend online for simple social "interacting". Unless it's absolutely required for grades, it ain't happenin'! But I notice that everyone seems to be doing very well, tweeting a bunch (although I don't consider tweeting the ideal mode of interaction) and even going above and beyond the expected on their individual blogs. Some of my classmates have demonstrated amazing prowess technologically. Whatever happened to practicing what we preach or, in this case, what we're learning? Guess when all tech fails, we resort to meeting for coffee face-to-face. Looking forward to it for those who live in the 850.