CoP (Communities of Practice) is a concept that was coined by
Wegner to explain an idea similar to cooperative learning. The idea of
communities of practice relies on the idea that people come together with a
shared interest and learn from and with each other. People all participate
within communities of practice within their daily life. Most commonly we
participate in these communities without realizing. It is important that we
take the community, practice and domain into consideration when we are working
with communities of practice. One of the most important things is to make sure
that you are working with each other and learning with and from each other. If
this is not happening then it is not a community of practice. After reading
about the concept of communities of practice I realized that this is a concept
that is very present in society. I especially see it while teaching. We as
teachers come together for the common goal of finding effective ways of
teaching. We learn from each other and discuss with each other our experiences.
I feel that we as teachers are also trying to help our students develop communities
of practice within the classroom. It is important that we provide the room for
students to develop these communities. While reading about communities of
practice, I automatically thought of how much more advanced communities of
practice are now due to our use of technology. We have communities to work with
more readily due to the Internet sources that we can use. After reading an
article online about this I realized that we tend to have 3 important sources
within our online communities of practice. The first is the connectors who know
many people are able to readily connect with others. Another important source
is mavens who have a plethora of knowledge and information and are ready to
share that information or guide you to the appropriate place. The last is the
salesperson that is able to get people on board with new ideas. These people
would be all very important within online communities of practice. I think
another important aspect of online communities of practice is the idea of
trust. I think you need to trust the people who you are working with and
building knowledge with. If you are not trusting of the people you will not be
able to effectively build knowledge.
Overall I feel that communities of practice are an important
part of life. I think that by participating in communities you are constantly
learning and building your knowledge set. By creating and using my PLN I will
be participating in multiple communities of practice, with most of them being
the same goal. I want to improve my knowledge set of teaching methods and using
technology within the classroom. I am able to participate in a variety of
domains to build a community set that hopefully will overlap with each other. I
belief that using these communities of practice I will positively advanced my
knowledge of using technology within my class, as well as using technology
myself.
