The long awaited book where social anthropologist Jean Lave shares her research study from Liberia, of tailor boy apprenticeship (where they learn not from their master directly, but from being inlcuded in everyday chores and observing their peer apprentices, a litte more advanced than themselves). JeanLve spent considerable time on location doing this study. In 2000 she was a guest teacher at the University of Copenhagen where I had the pleasure to follow a dozen lectures. With my study companion's courage, we were allowed to have a one hour long conversation with Jean Lave, planned as an interview but never published, to my regret. The book can be purchased as an e-book for 30 days, at the reasonable price of $6, or full price $27 (same as in print).

Disney, Militarization and the National Security State After 9/11 Tuesday 23 August 2011 by: Henry A. Giroux and Grace Pollock, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. | Book Excerpt

In this extended meditation, Jean Lave interweaves analysis of the process of apprenticeship among the Vai and Gola tailors of Liberia with reflections on the evolution of her research on those tailors in the late 1970s. In so doing, she provides both a detailed account of her apprenticeship in the art of sustained fieldwork and an insightful overview of thirty years of changes in the empirical and theoretical facets of ethnographic practice. Examining the issues she confronted in her own work, Lave shows how the critical questions raised by ethnographic research erode conventional assumptions, altering the direction of the work that follows. As ethnography takes on increasing significance to an ever widening field of thinkers on topics from education to ecology, this erudite but accessible book will be essential to anyone tackling the question of what it means to undertake critical and conceptually challenging fieldwork. Apprenticeship in Critical Ethnographic Practice explains how to seriously explore what it means to be human in a complex world-and why it is so important.

Mark Warschauer is one of the most knowledgeable in the field of developing online education. His advice on what to share in your Statement of Purpose for a Ph.D program resonates with some insight in what NOT to tell :-) " People who are reading a SOP for Ph.D. programs care about two things: (1) Do you have the potential to be an outstanding scholar? And (2) are your research interests a good match for the Ph.D. program and its faculty? Anything beyond these two things is superflous. Your SOP should thus be directed to getting these two things across. "

nVivo book on Google books- part of it can be read online - although tenyears of age could have many interesting aspects on using software for qualitative data analysis

Video recording from a conference lecture in 2010 I think, with Jean Lave speaking about learning as a social practice. Much as I recall her Copenhagen seminars back in 2000 The first minutes of audio are quite bad, but I think it gets better. "Jean Lave, PhD en antropología social de la Universidad de Harvard y teórica ampliamente reconocida en el campo del aprendizaje social, dictó el 21 de abril la conferencia Apprenticeship in Critical Ethnographic Practice, realizada por el Departamento de Psicología de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad de los Andes."

Another example on how the CoP concept is being used - from Ireland " The Mechanical Engineering Community of Practice (CoP) is one of 12 Communities of Practice founded to support the development of innovation in teaching and learning in the Third and Fourth Level academic community. The CoP was formed in February 2007, through funding and support from the National Digital Learning Repository (NDLR) The NDLR is an initiative to provide a platform to develop and share learning resources for various Communities of Practice. "

This is one of those titles that are owned by Springerlink. What I reaaly like are the tags suggested: I've recycled them here Information Overload - Emergency Management - communities of practice - professional communications - recommender systems Abstract Thirty four professionals who are part of a community of practice in the field of health related emergency response management provided information about the sources of information that they currently use the most, as well as their unmet information needs, and the kinds of information systems tools they would like to have. This professional community relies heavily on the Web, but they report severe information overload, in terms of not easily being able to find the kinds of information they want, amid the deluge of information that is there. In particular, they would find a system that uses social tagging and social recommender system features to be very useful for accessing relevant documents in the "gray literature." We suggest that services such as these will be increasingly important for professional communities in general.

How annotation works in Diigo?

I wonder if any of you are already using Diigo note taking?

2007 conference at Open University UK , with lectures from Etienne Wenger and Yrjö Engeström - like they also met in 2010 in Aalborg at the Networked learning conference. The lectures were followed by discussion between the presenters. The page offers access to full papers and a PPT presentation where Engeström further develops his theory of mycorrhizae, (also known as rhizome)networks growing uncontrolled, in the wild

Engeström paper from 2001 ABSTRACT Cultural-historical activity theory has evolved through three generations of research. The emerging third generation of activity theory takes two interacting activity systems as its minimal unit of analysis, inviting us to focus research efforts on the challenges and possibilities of inter-organizational learning. Activity theory and its concept of expansive learning are examined.4 questions: 1. Who are the subjects of learning? 2. Why do they learn? 3. What do they learn? 4. How do they learn? Five central principles of activity theory are presented, namely activity system as unit of analysis, multi-voicedness of activity, historicity of activity, contradictions as driving force of change in activity, and expansive cycles as possible form of transformation in activity. Together the questions and principles form a matrix which is used to present a study of expansive learning in a hospital setting in Finland. In conclusion, implications of the framework for our understanding of the increasingly important horizontal dimension of learning are discussed.

This is the research project that I found and visited in 2000. Ricki Goldman-Segall is a digital video ethnograhper studing how children learn and think. Her book from 1998 was an inspiration for me and my study pertner, William Vonsild, and with a study grant from our university of education in Copenhagen, we were enabled to visit Vancouver and Vancouver Island. Ricki was very helpful and let us follow her multimedia students' exam projects, and supported our vist to the achool that she had used for her research project about five years earlier, Bayside Middle School. A school built in 1992 with a technology enriched infrastructure, each pod of 10 classrooms had a very well equipped computer lab and the whole building was wired in order to have access to very fast internet connection from anywhere.

It is a site for anyone who is involved in teaching languages (including literature and culture) in Irish universities or Institutes of Technology. We want you to feel part of a wider community and to join our spirit of "share and share alike," passing on materials, information and support to one another. All modern languages HE academics can access the NDLR repository database through this blog in order to contribute, search for, download and reuse copyright-free (or limited restriction) resources in their teaching and learning.

Social Networking Goes to School. This blog article is about research on how schools and parents are working togehter, or not). Uses of social network sites like twitter and fb are described - just skimmed but found of interest. (In Denmark, a trend of school intranet has grown for the last few years , still with a very closed and one-way mostly view). Sus

This book offers an introduction to actor-network theory for educators to consider in three modes. One mode is the introduction of concepts, approaches and debates around actor-network theory as a research approach in education. Another mode is a showcase of educational studies that have employed ANT approaches in classrooms, workplaces and community settings, drawn from the UK, USA, Canada, Europe and Australia. These work with ANT in highly diverse ways, often bending and twisting ANT ideas to better approach the educational question at hand whether it focuses on policy critique, curriculum inquiry, engagements with digital media, change and innovation, issues of accountability, or exploring how knowledge unfolds and becomes materialized in various settings

Los Angeles Clinical PhD: A Scholar-Practitioner Program The clinical PhD training program on Alliant's Los Angeles campus is based on a scholar-practitioner model where practice and scholarship receive equal emphasis. The program is based on the principle that clinical psychologists have a responsibility to work to ameliorate psychological suffering and facilitate psychological well-being through both basic and applied research and interventions that evolve from scholarly work relevant to societal needs. An underlying philosophical assumption of the program is that there is a need for innovative scholarship that provides a foundation for the development of interventions to meet the needs of diverse and underserved populations.

All learning begins with the learner. What children know and what they want to learn are not just constraints on what can be taught; they are the very foundation for learning. Dewey's description of the four primary interests of the child are still appropriate starting points: 1. the child's instinctive desire to find things out 2. in conversation, the propensity children have to communicate 3. in construction, their delight in making things 4. in their gifts of artistic expression.

The Inquiry Page is more than a website. It's a dynamic virtual community where inquiry-based education can be discussed, resources and experiences shared, and innovative approaches explored in a collaborative environment.

Volume 13, Issues 1-2, Pages 1-100 (January 2010) Special Issue on the Community of Inquiry Framework: Ten Years Later Edited by Karen Swan and Phil Ice