To be or not to be...

That is the question.  Or at least the discussion.  Identity.  What I am taking from Wenger is that identity is about how you perceive and reflect the world you experience.  This can even include self-reflection, and imagined experiences and perceptions.  To me, Wenger's idea of identity "negotiation" is the filtering of identification through the individual.  If I'm totally wrong here, somebody please help me!  Identity is the personal lens to the world... it is how one perceives themselves in relation to the rest of the world and how the world perceives the person. (Think of a lens though, the view changes depending what you are looking at and through which end you are looking).   I do not think there is identity without both types of perception.  (Wenger's flower, for example, cannot have an identity).  I am going to go with Wenger's view that learning shapes identity.  If an identity is not changed in some way, there is no learning (and the poor flower can't learn).  I still do not think a community of practice is necessary for learning. Where I strongly agree with Wenger is in his description of his three modes of belonging: all require energy, and all have the potential to be restrictive or freeing.  I think my problem with some of the Web 2.0 applications we have been studying (such a twitter or del.icio.us) is the feeling that these are actually restricting my modes of belonging.  They are taking up energy I would prefer to use elsewhere and my frustrations leave me more misaligned with the members of those communities more than anything else.  (Sorry twitter peeps!)  A great thing about Web 2.0 however, (at least outside of class), is that we can choose which communities we wish to engage in (and align with) that will help shape our identities.