A network of weblogs as a community of practice

The use of weblogs implies a transformation of the community of practice (CoP) concept. I want to illustrate this with a recent experience.

A community of practice can be described as a group whose members regularly engage in sharing and learning, based on a common interest. According to Wikipedia

the concept of a community of practice (often abbreviated as CoP) refers to the process of social learning that occurs when people who have a common interest in some subject or problem collaborate over an extended period to share ideas, find solutions, and build innovations.

These members are often working in a similar field of practice. They often use an online platform to share knowledge and learn from each other (e.g. Learning Times).

Since some years weblogs are becoming more and popular in the e-learning field. Today, there are several teachers and consultants who write about e-learning. Examples are Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Teemu Leinonen, Will Richardson, Ann Davis and our evaluator Graham Attwell. The are called Edubloggers. In the Netherlands there is also a group of active Edubloggers, and I am one of them. Most of the Dutch Edubloggers write in Dutch. Next to this group of Edubloggers, there are several practitioners without a weblog of their own that respond to weblog contributions. And a larger group is just reading the contributions.

Not all the Dutch Edubloggers do not know each other personally. Some Edubloggers meet at (international) conferences, once in a while. Last year on the night before a large Dutch e-learning conference a "Edublog"-dinner was organized. Several Edubloggers attended this dinner. This year a second "Edublog"-dinner will take place.

The Dutch Edubloggers do not use a central spot on the web to communicate and learn. They use their own weblogs. Let me illustrate this with an example. A few weeks ago I attended a national conference about the "next generation" virtual learning environment. I wrote an impression in my weblog about it. Other Edubloggers did the same. The impressions differed a lot. Response was given in different weblogs, for example by someone who did not have a weblog of his own. One Edublogger, who did not attend the conference, wrote an important reflective contribution in his weblog. And someone else summarized the discussion in his weblog. At last, another Edublogger reflected on this process (which stimulated a new discussion). She also visualized this process.

Is this a working CoP? Definitely! Although, the Edubloggers do not collaborate intentionally. Moderators (summarizing discussion, analyzing the process) were not asked to do their job, they do it spontaneously. Do they use one virtual platform? No. How do these Edubloggers know what discussions are going on? The answer is simple: thanks to RSS. According to Wikipedia RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a format that allows

internet users to subscribe to websites that have provided RSS feeds; these are typically sites that change or add content regularly. To use this technology, site owners create or obtain specialized software (such as a content management system) which, in the machine-readable XML format, presents new articles in a list, giving a line or two of each article and a link to the full article or post. Unlike subscriptions to pulp-based newspapers and magazines, RSS subscriptions are free.

It looks like complex technology, but it is an extremely user-friendly. As an end user you use a RSS-feed reader, which enables you to see very fast which of your favorite weblogs and websites (that support RSS) have changed since  you visited them the last time. Furthermore, the Dutch Edubloggers have an aggregator (a web application that collects syndicated Web content, such as RSS and other XML feeds from weblogs and websites that support RSS).

Personally I use the RSS-feed reader Bloglines. It is web-based and simple to use. I subscribed to more than 90 RSS-feeds (almost all about e-learning). I try to check them daily (not all weblogs/sites change every day, fortunately).

In my opinion we should take this development into account if we want to facilitate CoP’s in the Work and Learn Together-project. A hugh advantage of a network of weblogs above a traditional virtual CoP is ownership. The individual professional owns his/her personal weblog. If (s)he starts a weblog, you can assume that (s)he is motivated to write. A weblog is bottom up, a CoP -often- top down. See my previous remarks about Why Do Professional Learning Communities Fail to Develop?

So, let’s promote the use of weblogs and RSS(-feed readers). Let us facilitate weblogs. Our COP should have an aggregator. Let us look for weblogs about tourism, stimulate branch organizations to use weblogs.