CoP

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.