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This research paper looks into success factors for communities of practice. Although the "success factors" portion of the article may fit better with future "how-to" assignments, I found the breakdown of CoPs helpful. Retna covers the basic idea that adults learn from day to day experiences, not just activities specifically designed for learning. Knowledge transfer is explained with emphasis on what it looks like in organizations. The paper goes on the account for CoPs in a multi-national company based out of Singapore. The findings are explained in the three components domain, community, and practice. The key success factors are identified as leadership, culture, and individual motivation to learn. 

First thing that caught my attention was, "An employee picks up the most relevant know-how in an organisation from day-to-day activities and by watching and talking with other employees." This absolutely defines what a community of practice is. Professional development is a great way to learn, but many of us learn best by seeing a theory, action, or idea in practice. Communities of practice connect people who have similar interests, providing them with a wide range of resources to draw upon. Motivation is also a major part to making a CoP a success. Once a member, one must stay active. Having a responsible leader helps to maintain motivation and organization of the community. I especially appreciated the emphasis on informal CoP. Members are there because they want to better themselves and periodically the leader may provide a reward however I believe knowledge is reward enough. Great paper!

I like how this article talks about knowledge is best understood as a "habitus". This habitus is everything that a person does that helps them acquire knowledge. This includes their activities and life experiences.

SUMMARY: Disaggregation of educational control leads to empowerment of individual learners.PLEs are presented as rebellious teenagers of the education domain, and yet by the end of the post you start to understand that often times, progress demands rebellion. And here we are.

This is a link to a paper about building online communities of practice with social networking tools. It details the CoP model introduced by Wenger, McDermott & Snyder: that is comprised of members and continually changes, that it is mutual engagement that binds members together, and that there is a shared set of resources that develops over time. The domain of CoP is is common ground that created a community. Practice comes from the resources that are created. The authors lead of of this into their proposed phases of the learning process in a CoP: Context, Discourse, Action, Reflection, and Reorganization.

This paper shows how members of communities of practice can increase their learning through social networking tools. They discuss how social networking is the forum for the domain (common ground) where people can discuss their ideas. This helps create personal meaning. This happens with a community which is a group of people who want to learn and interact together. The practice is the knowledge that the group develops. Within the article, he discusses how different social networks enhances communities of practice.

In January 2010, the Department offered a program of free, online conferences to support teacher professional learning. The program of web conferences covered the domains of Literacy, Maths, Science and ICT

If you can't find Public Domain images that fit your needs, you can also use Creative Commons-licensed content and the sources below make finding these images, and properly attributing them, quick and easy.

The technological domain has undergone a tremendous transformation with revolutionary advancements like blockchain increasing in popularity each day. Blockchain is an open, distributed, and decentralized ledger where data is stored in the form of blocks.

Library of images, videos, and other resources in the public domain. Not as widely contributed to as one would expect.

Edutopia writer Vicki Davis discusses how PLNs have empowered her students to guide their own learning experiences. She discusses the weaknesses of PLNs and how they work.

While this blog posting from Edutopia does point to some "how tos" and practical application, it does offer key theoretical practices for setting the stage for applying the PLN model for student use. Vicki Davis, the teacher and author of the blog post, states that her students are familiar with breaking news due the development of their own PLN that acts as a "virtual locker." She goes on to discuss how their research builds the content of their PLN and the content changes based upon the assignment. The big idea is that the PLN model allows students to act as the orchestrator of their own learning and allows them to analyze information via an avenue that is personalized to student's learning needs. It also teaches students to embrace connectivism where they make connections between domains in order to form a more complete understanding.

The article goes into the role of a PLN for students. Students can create their own networks to possess information at their fingertips on any topic they could ever desire. By establishing a networking system, the students don't necessarily have to go out and scour the internet for sources when their network could bring relevant information to them.

This is a training resource that I came across from a school district in Indiana. It focuses on how professional learning communities or communities of practice can avoid becoming a passing fad in educational reform. It gives three "big ideas" that educational CoPs need to focus on to truly be successful. They are: ensuring that students learn, creating a culture of collaboration, focusing on results by holding themselves accountable.

Thank you for sharing this. Just today, my school discussed starting PLC's and I feel that is important to focus on those three big ideas. I feel that this article makes us look closely at the questions and the answer to those questions before we begin creating networks and communities. Makes me think of the UbD-approach and how we should think about what the goals are and what we want our PLC's to do specifically before making them vent sessions amongst teachers.

Communities of practice are made of people who share a passion or interest and want to improve their knowledge of it; for real learning to occur, it must take place in a community of learners who are also interested and learning; the relationship between knowledge and practice is explored

This provides a nice overview of CoPs. I enjoyed the annotation feature too.

This site gives an overview of communities of practice and discusses the viewpoints of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, who are well known proponents of the idea. This site provides a basic rationale for communities of practice and describes how we are all involved in them in various aspects of our lives, whether we realize it or not.

This webpage from the US Department of Education describes how Communities of Practice can improve education.

SUMMARY: The DOE gets behind CoPs as potential answer for achievement gap and underperforming teachers and leaders. Money, time, and resources were thrown at this initiative to see if online CoPs could become the missing link in the instructional shortcomings. Citing examples of success, one is drawn and intrigued to look further at the project as we are now 2 years later.

Finding and researching CoP sites I came across the Department of Education's answer on the Communities of Practice within education. The Department of Education has added the communities of practice within an initiative called the Investing in Innovation along with a series of other initiatives.

This is a website that I have been working on throughout the summer. When I started in July, the content was severely outdated (up to three years out of date) and few people in our council were actually visiting the site. Along with this ever ongoing process of maintaining content, there will be more changes coming to the CSS and the appearance of the site in the future. The principal webmaster, who still manages the domain for us, set it up using Joomla. I had never used this platform previously, so there has been a learning curve associated with the process of updating this site. I posted this URL because I visit the site daily, not necessarily because it will be of much value to my classmates.

I chose to share this link for two reasons: 1) It describes communities of practice, ways to support CoPs through networking, social learning, and online identities. 2) It's presented via a wiki, which is a platform that embodies the spirit of SNL, CoPs and PLNs.

I found this site to be very informative in a brief way! I find sites such as this a nice way to get started on something...find out enough so you know where to go next!

I appreciate the comment in this wiki about communities of practice developing a common store of knowledge. When I first heard the term, communities of practice, a few years ago, I thought they were simply referring to a group of people with something in common, not necessarily a group with a common purpose or goal toward which they are actively working.

Elementary students at Council Rock School District participate in an annual Media Festival where they showcase their media-based projects for both a local and global community. This is a great way for teachers to see the creative possibilities of media integration.

Article on screencapture of 3D video games that clearly show Lave & Wenge's community, domain and practice.The authors use quantitative analysis to show the stabilization of a creative community.

Search over 230,000 free photos, illustrations, and vector graphics or share your own pictures as public domain on Pixabay.

This particular document looks at the communities of practice model from the lens of a government agency in its' partnership with businesses, foundations, non-profits, and other organizations. The document's value comes to life in the fact that it focuses on how the communities of practice implemented are more of a valid method for productivity because a shared interest is involved and the experiences are shared. First time viewers of this document would benefit from the diagram on page 8 that explores the distinct features of the community, domain and practice which lead to a successful community of practice. The diagram is an excellent means of introducing the model to new participants or those already engaged in a community of practice, but simply unaware of their involvement. I also appreciate this document because it offers practicality and context in viewing how multiple entities can come together to form a community of practice united by a common purpose.

I found this article interesting because it talked about the value of using CoP's in management, in particular government. It details the changing age of technology in meeting the demands and needs of communities and organizations around the world. As needs and wants begin to move, so do the challenges that are provided to government. In this regard it talks about utilizing the value on online communities to help create a network of highly skilled people to meet these new demands. By engaging people in this kind of networking through social media people are able to better handle new situations by connecting with people who have experienced similar problems in the past.

A collection of public domain works from the people behind Wikipedia

The video by Bruce Knox helped me to reacquaint myself with Communities of Practice. I like how he explains the parts to consider and if one already exists.

Very clearly laid out. I like the way it defines a community of practice and the purpose. And the three areas that need to be developed: the community, domain and practice. Communities of practices are not created but rather are fostered - nice differentiation.

Video sharing what and why we want Communities of Practice. This class could be considered a CoP, we are grouping together with similar interests, to share ideas and get better at what we do.