Tag: Community of Practice (CoP)

PhD Process Reflections

I have received such helpful feedback based on my posting yesterday, “Reflective Journal for My Doctoral Studies – Do It Online?,” that I think I shall begin, somewhat carefully, sharing my daily thoughts about my journey through the process (or at least the current module). I will try to do this with political care (not mentioning colleagues by name, not giving away everything in the program, etc.) that will focus on my own developing thoughts in this process, rather than the process itself.

Of course, writing as if some of this can be considered independently is ridiculous; that is one of the things I am noticing based on our intense reading of some of Wenger and Lave’s earlier works around social learning / networked learning / communities of practice. In some ways this all makes a lot of sense, in that the very process of thinking about even writing about this publicly, with my own community’s feedback and guidance, is part of the process itself.

Trying on a New Tagline

This past week I raised the issue of rebranding my blog by updating my tagline. Thanks to all those wonderful colleagues who offered their comments on this, I am making an update and will “try it on” for a week or so. If I like it, I will keep it; if it still feels somehow incomplete or inaccurate, I will adjust it again.

So, I went from:

Reflective practice in organizational learning, educational technology, and postmodern society.

to

Fostering the practice of postmodern learning and research.

I believe this includes my passions:

  • reflective practice
  • learning paradigms
  • teaching and learning
  • postmodernism and post-structuralism
  • constructivism and critical theory
  • qualitative research
  • technology enhanced learning and educational technology
  • communities of practice

I wonder if those who know me (or those who may have only recently met me for the first time) think this “fits?”

Personal Branding, or Rebranding

I was recently reading a college oriented document about having a “personal brand,” and while it was aimed at undergraduates who may have little real-world experience to point to and may benefit from a personal message upon which to focus and highlight their lives in a concise and engaging way, I was intrigued.

I did not read this as an elevator speech, but rather as the little phrase (or tagline, subtitle, or caption) that appears at the top of most blogs. It includes interests, perhaps a value proposition, an idea of what I am passionate about, interests, and such.

I did some brainstorming, and found these common words (and threads):

  • reflective practice
  • critical thinking
  • assumptions
  • paradigms
  • teaching
  • learning
  • postmodernism
  • constructivism
  • qualitative
  • online
  • community of practice

I wonder if it is time for me to revise mine?

Currently, I am using:

Reflective practice in organizational learning, educational technology, and postmodern society.

and I have been thinking about changing it to something more along the lines of:

Challenging assumptions to promote learning and teaching

or:

Challenging assumptions to construct postmodern learning

Now, it is time for some feedback and help with this. I am oftentimes surprised by who reads my blog, and invite some feedback and thoughts here. I have been tinkering with this idea for about four weeks, and now want to decide and have something new to live with and try out. Thoughts?

CIDER and FOC08 Live Online Sessions Today

There are two wonderful professional development opportunities today that I am hoping to attend:

  1. Gale Parchoma of Lancaster University will be speaking live online via CIDER (Canadian Institute of Distance Education Research) at 11:00 MDT (time conversion here). Her topic is “Adoption of Technology Enhanced Learning in Higher Education.”
  2. Leigh Blackall will have the first of two conference calls for his Facilitating Online Communities sessions this evening at UTC 9:00 PM (time conversion here).

Both of these promise to be wonderful free learning events for those of us who work with online learning, communities of practice, and educational technology.

Online Communities and the Removal of Distance

I think online communities of practice and even online classes are changing the ways we think about distance. It almost seems, from the perspective of community, that distance no longer exists. Does it matter if I email colleagues who are spread across the globe? Speak with them via Skype whenever and wherever they may be, as long as I get the timezones correct? Has this flattening of our world changed the way we think about people in other cultural contexts, within national identities, and exotic (and not so exotic) locales?

As my work and research begins to more formally be online, do I  have to be concerned with distance at all?

Further to my point here, what does all this mean for where and how communities form and interact? Leigh asked us to consider what online communities are in our FOC08 class, and I have managed to say exactly what they are not–they are not separated by distance.

I started this post before and finished after having a delightful conversation with a colleague in Brazil, Barbara Dieu. We started speaking (via skype text, which is speaking with the fingers) about Second Life and the FOC08 Course, and the next thing I knew is that Bee asked me what interests me and what I want to learn more about. I gushed about Lyotard’s “incredulity toward metanarrative, Mezirow’s transformative learning, Denzin / Lincoln / Guba’s work in qualitative research, Freire, Brookfield, pugs, cities, theories, technology, and Madame Butterfly.

I think that community is in there someplace. Something about openness to ideas and encouragement to grow and learn and become more present. Something about being with others who share a space next to us along the journey, whatever and wherever it may lead.

This conversation would never have happened without the community focus of this course, and how our different interests and experiences helps to inform and realize them. To all this, community adds and supports, and it has an amazing capacity to do all this without regard to distance.

Perhaps communities of practice help realize the Internet’s claim to make the world a smaller place, though one with more individual possibilities?