“The perspectives we bring to our endeavours are important because they shape both what we perceive and what we do.” Pp. 225, Communities of practice, Wenger, 1999. So this means the first stage of designing an effective learning experience is to determine the perspectives from which potential learners will be approaching their learning. This is [...]
‘Communities of Practice’ – Wenger (1999) This extract from the final chapters of Communities of Practice, by Etienne Wenger – provides us with a dual framework: 1) as a participant – which aspects of design to you notice are present (or not) in your community and 2) as a designer – as we prepare to [...]
SUMMARY NOTES of the key concepts in: Chapter 11, ‘Communities of Practice’ – Wenger PART 3: ORGANIZATIONS Communities of practice differ from institutional entities: they negotiate their own enterprise they arise, evolve and dissolve according to their own learning they shape their own boundaries There are two aspects to the organization – the designed organization [...]
SUMMARY NOTES of the key concepts in: Chapter 10, ‘Communities of Practice’ – Wenger PART 2: LEARNING ARCHITECTURES Need a skeletal architecture for learning (purpose of a conceptual architecture is to lay down the general principles of design ie state what needs to be in place) So must recast the conceptual framework, laying out the [...]
SUMMARY NOTES of the key concepts in: Synopsis, ‘Communities of Practice’ – Wenger PART 1: SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE Perspectives are important because they shape what we perceive and what we do. We often learn things without having any intention of becoming full members in any specifiable community of practice. Some learning is best done in groups [...]
What prompted these musings? An unfamiliar term I came across in the Australian Teacher magazine. Having not heard of videophilia before, I did what we all do these days and googled it. On this site: http://www.videophilia.org/, I came across this definition: videophilia: The new human tendency to focus on sedentary activities involving electronic media. Source:Pergams, [...]
What prompted these musings? A link to this video from a colleague (Thanks Suzanne!) which was very thought provoking. We can spend all this time on technology and tools but unless we have the fundamentals sorted, we have to question how effective the whole experience really is. In addition to the jokes about educators which [...]
What prompted these musings? Remembering what it USED to be like to arrange an overseas trip. What I love most about the Internet is you can find out anything you could possibly ever need to know and it makes it all so easy. I remember when I first traveled overseas in 1991. You bought the lonely [...]
What prompted these musings? Firstly a comment from a fellow blogger about disguising what is really an ad as a blog (http://forblogssake.edublogs.org/2008/04/05/when-is-a-blog-an-ad/) and secondly some comments from some classmates about their shyness and insecurities about publicly posting their thoughts on a blog as part of their assignments for this course. I have a theory. I [...]
What prompted these musings? A recent discussion on ABC Sydney radio about the Australian swimmer whose party photos on a social networking site were suddenly brought into the spotlight by the media – highlighting the need for careful consideration of all information posted on the Net. You probably think you own the rights to your [...]
