re-Visiting COPs

For my final synthesis of the three themes in CI 597, I want to revisit my first thoughts of Communities of Practice.  This final synthesis is broken into three posts, entitled "re-Visiting COPs," "a COPs Identity," and "designing a COP."  All posts are related to Communities of Practice (COPs).

This post starts with an analysis of a previous post from February 4, 2008.  In this post "creating Communities of Practice," I explain that learning in COPs is broken into meaning, practice, community, and identity.  Learning occurs through experience, doing, belonging, and becoming.  These Communities of Practice exist because we are able to negotiate, develop, and share our theories and ways of understanding the world.   Etienne Wenger explains that these communities include both participation and reification.  These ideas can be found on a previous post from February 11, 2008 entitled "Community of Practice revisited." 

Participation and reification contribute to the discontinuity of a boundary or help to create a boundary.  The boundary allows for negotiation of meaning through community interconnectedness with other COPs.  In the Web 2.0 world, you can easily negotiate meaning with users anywhere in the world through boundaries.  More on this can be found on a previous post from February 18, 2008 entitled "Whatcha gonna do when they come for you? An analysis of COPs in the Web 2.0 world" 

Constellations of Practice are the combination of many different Communities of Practice.  Every time we join a new COP, we are adding an addition to our Constellation.  We ARE drawing our own constellations (of practice) throughout our lives. 

What does this all mean in context with Web 2.0 technology?  The answer is simple.  We can create COPs using Web 2.0 technologies as reification objects or as boundary objects.  However, in order to create these COPs, we must know and understand the identity of the participants.  Thus, my next posting will be "a COPs Identity."

All links used in this post:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/mdm392/blogs/ci597/2008/02/creating-communities-of-practi.html
http://www.personal.psu.edu/mdm392/blogs/ci597/2008/02/community-of-practice-revisite.html
http://www.personal.psu.edu/mdm392/blogs/ci597/2008/02/whatcha-gonna-do-when-they-com.html
http://www.personal.psu.edu/mdm392/blogs/ci597/2008/02/wengers-constellations.html