eFest Workshop Communities of practice


Derek Chirnside - Communities of Practice, creative facilitation in a Web 2.0 worldSome wonderful insights into this phenomenon. A wonderful mix of multimedia to illustrate concepts and principles of what a community is and how to create it. A little bit of theory (situated cognition) and seeding some ideas e.g. identity...Material from Etienne Wenger and ideas for designing a structure for a community. The following question caught my attention:

Does a community of practice need a place?
Share tools and stories e.g. housewives who meet over coffee. Elements in design - connectivity, leadership, membership, events, artefacts, projects (p17 in handout).

Bounded learning communities in formal taught courses - goals, identity, collaboration, respectful inclusion, progressive discourse and knowledge building.

Facilitation ideas: liked the one about having a task which passes from one to another "you are it" idea.

Used an idea called organic metaphors.

Derek told the group a little about Web 2.0 tools. We discussed things such as: what makes a good blog? Think of an expert in our field who keeps a blog. For example, Derek Wenmouth - models putting yourself into it, weaving stories, keeping it up to date. Blogs can be Vblogs (video) audio blogs.

Podcasting: mentioned ipods and recording, Audacity. Could do 6 minute audio summary of lectures and post to blog. These resources can be a nuturing tool.

Tools serve the community. Think identity not technology.

http://www.netvibes.com can be used for organising tools - use it as a course homepage.

What We 2.0 tools should we use for the community of practice.

CPSquare.com uses a content area (Moodle or Blackboard), blog, wiki, RSS feed, Flickr, Skype.

This was a good chance to pull together some different ideas around communities of practice and it was fun. Learned about Twitter....now off to find out more about it.