Group items tagged

Technology also determined how the project would end. Considering I was using the internet for overseas contact, I decided to look domestically for the conclusion. As a result of just a few minutes effort using emails I found three US museums (see below) who agreed to take our class interview projects for safe keeping in their archives. I was overwhelmed by the interest in our work and was amazed when the US National WWII Museum in New Orleans asked to have us provide links and information for their website.

In conclusion, some simple email and wiki-site contact with a handful of schools brought the WWII period to life for Midwestern students in the US like nothing else could have.

The characteristics of communities of practice

According to Etienne Wenger (c 2007), three elements are crucial in
distinguishing a community of practice from other groups and communities:

The domain. A community of practice is is something more
than a club of friends or a network of connections between people. 'It has an
identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a
commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes
members from other people' (op. cit.).

The community. 'In pursuing their interest in their
domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and
share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each
other' (op. cit.).

The practice. 'Members of a community of practice are
practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences,
stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared
practice. This takes time and sustained interaction' (op. cit.).

'the purpose is not to learn from talk as a substitute for
legitimate peripheral participation; it is to learn to talk as a key to
legitimate peripheral participation'. This orientation has the definite
advantage of drawing attention to the need to understand knowledge and learning
in context. However, situated learning depends on two claims:

• It makes no sense to talk of knowledge that is decontextualized, abstract or
  general.
• New knowledge and learning are properly conceived as being located in
  communities of practice (Tennant 1997: 77).

Learning is in the relationships between people.
As McDermott (in Murphy 1999:17) puts it:

Learning traditionally gets measured as on the assumption that
it is a possession of individuals that can be found inside their heads… [Here]
learning is in the relationships between people. Learning is in the conditions
that bring people together and organize a point of contact that allows for
particular pieces of information to take on a relevance; without the points of
contact, without the system of relevancies, there is not learning, and there is
little memory. Learning does not belong to individual persons, but to the
various conversations of which they are a part.