Communities of Practice
I decided to read the first article by Etienne Wenger. “Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.”(Etienne Wenger). I thought this article was very easy to understand, and that was a big concern for me since i have never ever heard of the term “Communities of Practice” before. The definition that he gave above i thought was the perfect way to explain to people what it means that are just learning about it. The way that he explains is makes me feel that a CoP is kind of a cool way to gather a group of people that are passionate about the same things that I are and creating a place full of information based off that interest. That way you can always refer back to it and it grows, sort of like a community! Now as i was reading the article i found out that a CoP is not just a group of people that throwing information at you all the time. It takes organization, and specific topics, as well as experience from the people that are posting so you gather correct, and worthy information. There are tons of different places that CoP’s are being used, which encourages me that anyone can use it in some way. You just have to put your mind to it and find others out there that are willing to incorporate what they know, and thus, form a small community. You can use it for personal interest, school, business, and many other things. So it is definitely a way to keep yourself updated on new information that is becoming available on what your CoP may be about.
That article was very well written, it got me to understand quickly as the article flowed along. After reading the article I started realizing as well that there’s a lot of communities of practice going on in the world.
The article itself makes me think of what needs to be done for my persoanl blog project. Communites can serve my needs well in the project I have to interact with other depts. to get a project going. Could be tough to get formed, but I am sure the design portion of the school has a lot fo creative individuals who have somewhat of the same interest I have.
Marco
Joining new communities were def. going to have to learn from people that have been around much longer, and has sort of a give and take relationship with them. CoP seem like they will have much to offer once we enter the feild of web page design.
I think its true that CoP’s will help us when we get into business’ and they seem to really help people who are having problems. I liked this article as you said it helps understand i still like the article we read last week better it helped me understand more and i learned alot more about what it was talking about
Do you think that Community of Practice can be applied into our fields and branch out to other field in the IT business? Because, if the community grows, wouldn’t it also bring other topics beside IT to the table? One thing for certain that I notice, that the community will grow, and that there will be flow of information brought into it. Will the information be relevant or do we as the members of that community will have to modify as we seem fit for the field that we are into?