Archive for the 'Communities' Category



Just share it

Published on November 9, 2008

Interesting post on issues relating to SocialLearn by Scott Leslie in his EdTech blog. These are his sub-heads: Planning to Share versus Just Sharing We grow our network by sharing, they start their network by setting up initial agreements We share what we share, they want to share what they often don’t have (or even […]


Open or malleable?

Published on March 8, 2008

My original proposal for my PhD was about virtual international communities in primary schools. Why? Well, apart from the excellent, and convincing, reasons I gave at my initial interview, it was what I thought I was most likely to be accepted for. With a 25-year-old degree in English, and a 20-year-old masters in history I […]


Community

Published on October 20, 2007

I’ve just been reading an article which I think will be very important for the structure of my thesis, because it outlines the key elements of a sense of community. From what I have seen of my data, I think that where the learning goes wrong is when these elements of community go wrong. McMillan, […]


Research questions revisited

Published on

Well, I’m working on my literature review, so I’m bound to tinker with my research questions, aren’t I? Also, an initial pass over my data showed me that if I just look at the skills and resources that people use to learn together online, I’m going to end up with a list. And not a […]


Networks and communities

Published on July 13, 2007

Is the difference – in educational terms – that networks are used for the exchange of skills and resources but have less power to create knowledge and transform people and identities? Must investigate.


Further thoughts on CoPs

Published on July 12, 2007

I’ve been back to Wenger’s book to try to address my queries. I think it’s the case that, with his ‘communities of practice’ label, he is seekng to mark these communities off from other groupings which have been labelled ‘community’ but which don’t really live up to that definition. He says that ‘membership is not […]


Community or community of practice?

Published on

I’ve run into a real problem with the idea of ‘comunity of practice’. What is the difference between a CoP and a community? Lots of people just take the CoP idea as is, and run with it. People who critique the ideas seem to do so in terms of thinking the model through – do […]


Types of learning

Published on July 10, 2007

I keep losing this, and I keep needing it. Forms of learning in a psychologists’ community of practice: They learn about psychologists’ resources and how to access these  They learn the skills which are required of a psychologist  They learn how to behave as a psychologist  They learn how to think like a psychologist.  They […]


Are students ever off-task online?

Published on May 14, 2007

This is an extract from my supervision minutes from last December. It contains a lot of points which are important to the development of my research, so I’ve put it here to remind me of these. Examine the resources used by students – local resources and broader social resources – and at how they use […]


CAL Monday 12.20

Published on April 5, 2007

Emergence v design – a case study of an emergent community of practice in a blended learning community in postgraduate education Tim Savage, Trinity College, Dublin. https://www.cs.tcd.ie/Tim.Savage/scholar.htm Once again, very relevant to me. I’m particularly interested in the idea of a blended community which brings together the online and the F2F, strengthening both. Tim used […]