This is an excerpt from an article titled "Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier" from the Harvard Business Review. While it is primarily from a business perspective, it explains and gives examples of what Communities of Practice (CoP) that are quite easy to understand. It is put simply by saying "they're groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise." They can meet physically or online and can meet regularly or not. Another important aspect that is addressed is that the CoPs can for spontaneously and therefore can be difficult to supervise and interfere with. This is an important aspect to address in terms of education and trying to form these communities within a classroom setting. In the end a snapshot is given to compare CoPs with other forms of organization.

This is a volume of Advancing Student Achievement through Technology: On Cue. It has many articles that I plan to read through, but the one that really caught my eye is "Professional Learning Communities- Can Our Students Do This Too?" on page 10. While it is not so much an explanation of a Professional Learning Community (PLC) I believe it is a great testament to what we are researching and trying to do through this course. The author was urged by her district to encourage PLCs in her 6th grade English classroom. With adults improving their education through the use of technology she feels her students should be doing it too. It gave many great quotes from the 6th grade students and I believe it is an encouraging article as we being to look at social media and the possible uses it can have within a classroom.

The article begins by addressing what a PLN is where a learner joins an informal, web-based communities and they create a network so they can learn whenever, wherever they would like. This article describes a PLN in the context of adult education and the role of the adult educator. The article describes what a PLN looks like. Last, it gives ways to help adults to learn in this type of culture and implications for this. As many articles do, this pushes for a change in education and change their model of teaching to fit this digital age.

This article pushes for a change in learning through Personal Learning Environments. This article recognizes that PLEs help to foster lifelong learning though providing multiple tools and resources to support the learning. It is argued that this learning does not have to be a formal, institutional learning, but can be informal which adapts for different styles of learning. A very interesting aspect of the article to me is the addressing of assessment and how the learning that has taken place through the PLE would be assessed. This primarily explains that evidence could be shown through artifacts and possibly an e-Portfolio. It later goes on to explain what a PLE would look like which include a copious amount of tools that one uses daily for learning. These tools primarily would be comprised of what is called social software connecting collaborators. The important take away from this article is that a PLE is not a tool to be implemented, but instead an approach for the use of a web of tools for learning and sharing creating a bridge between the learner and the world outside.

This article discusses personal learning networks, specifically in how they challenge the current design of educational systems. It argues that the current education system follows a dominant design which pushes following a typical design that focuses on the integration of tools, draws a very obvious line of who the teacher is and who the learner is, restricts content and connections, along with others. They should instead focus on creating personal learning networks which focus on the connections that are being created rather than the tools implemented, form symmetric relationships where any user can consume or contribute, provides open content, and many other reasons. It also gives possible implementation stratifies and possible challenges to this system or ideology.

In this TEDx talk by George Siemens he discusses connections. He begins to discuss this through his own personal background. He pushes inherently through his talk for a change in education. He pushes that the importance of education is connectedness and implies that education currently is inhibiting this connectedness. He says that many platforms for students to be connected are often locked down which I can also say I have found to be true. He parts the talk that he believes the primary task of education is connectedness and that we need to collapse education down to this to cause our students to become better members of society.

This article discusses the theory of connectivism. It discusses the difference between being a learning theory or instructional theory and the differences between each. I like the basic definition that this article gives for connectivism which is that it "is social learning that is networked." Technology in our society is becoming increasingly more prevalent and this theory recognizes this change in our society. The article explains how connectivism is a learning theory because it is characterized by how a student's learning is enhanced by a personal network, the vast amount of data makes it impossible for someone to know all that is needed for different situations, and by current learning theories not acknowledging technology and the changes it brings they are limited. The opposing viewpoints are also discussed and explained that this will be a debate for probably many years to come.

This is a brief but comprehensive introduction as to what communities of practice are by Etienne Wenger. One important aspect addressed is that learning is a product of a community of practice whether intentionally or not. It also gives multiple examples of what a common community of practice can look like such as problem solving, discussing developments, and visits. The concept came to be as a learning model by Wenger and Jean Lave. The concepts has many applications but a couple common places these communities are seen are organizations, government, education, and technology.

This article begins by explaining communities of practice. The article cites Wenger who states that a community of practice defines itself among three different dimensions which are what it is about, how it functions, and what capability it has produced. It explains that there are a vast number of different types of communities of practice and that in our daily lives we are a part of a number of them whether a central member or more on the outskirts. Being an educator myself, I really appreciated the final section of the article which explains implications for educators. It explains that learning occurs through interactions with people, we as educators work so that students may become members of communities of practice, and the importance of thinking through the connection between knowledge and practice.

This article explains what a community of practice is. It gives two aspects that are necessary for a community of practice which are "shared experience over time, and a commitment to shared understanding." The article also contrasts communities of practice with groups of speakers. It also explains that a child's linguistics are much more related to a child's communities of practice as opposed to their parents' social class.

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