Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger
In reading this article Communities of Practice, to me is an organazation or club among a group of individuals who come together to discuss and learn how to improve their performance. In a way, it seems a tad bit similiar to blogging. But unlike blogging, the communities serves a more of a purpose than online usage. They have communities who have face-to-face meetings and networking among themselves. Some local, some world-wide. It seems to me that there is too much polotics involved here. Not my preference when it comes to topics, but nevertheless, a new expirience I have learned that I can take with me. The communities allows them to come together to problem solve, question, research, share ideas, network, passions, concerns, and collaborate among each other. Personally, I rather blog my way in to finding all the info. I want to be able to blog and research my own resources. Although, a community can serve a good purpose. You can network with individuals face-to-face who are in the same interest who can give you advice on what you are there for. Everybody from business to education benefit from a community of practice.
Marco
these communities will def. come in handy when we have a question or mis-understanding about something. These will also def. help us out with communicating with each other and starting a better community to work together.
liked the points you came across.
I see where you’re coming from. But I think that communities of practice would be much more useful than blogs. In a community of practice you can just ask a question and get a direct answer. I just think it’s better for finding out what I want to know and is a better way to elaborate.
Networking is somewhat a community of practice and that interaction is usually done on the internet. However, as stated that face to face interaction is always the best way to learn. In one sense, a community of practice follows the norms of blogging, however,the information that is shared in this community can be used to teach those who want the info and later they themselves can teach it to others, sort of like “Give some one a fish, you only feed him for a day, teach someone to fish, you feed him a lifetime.”
Communities are like that, no matter if it is something related to what we are learning in class or totally something else in life that we are learning. However, a question arised when I was reading the article. So much that the community of practice is mentioned that I realized it has the same characteristics of a PLE, so the question is: Is Community of Practive the next stage of PLE, or is it different than that of PLE?
Jansen.
A community of practice is much broader than a PLE. Hell, a community of practice could be considered just about anything. I work at Express and we all like/sell clothes, there’s a community of practice. I play on a softball team…community of practice. My brothers and I hunt together, another community of practice. I don’t see what all the fuss is about.