In an hour I am off to the Alt C conference in Nottingham.

I am chairing a session on international Communities of Practice.

There is a bit of a strange history to this session. We originally submitted a proposal for a symposium,. However it was knocked back. We could, the programme committee said, have a short paper session - 20 minutes. Now the problem - how to fit three presentations into twenty minutes and still have time for discussion.

We decided each presenter should have a two minute video slot. So here are the results - surprisingly it seems to work - each makes a good point in only 2 minutes.

But first the overview - this is the blurb from the application (written by George Roberts).

"Communities exist on many scales and few communities can truly be called communities of practice (CoP) in the strict and elaborated sense as used by Lave and Wenger. Through purposeful engagement with CoPs people progress from a state of peripheral participation towards a state of mastery of the forms and norms
of the CoP (see: Dewey, 1933; Goodman, 2003; Lave & Wenger, 1991;
Leont'ev, 1978; Wenger, 1998). This journey is sometimes mirrored by progression in formal education, but as often as not is supported by episodes of informal learning. This may take place in institutions, but more often occurs in the workplace, the home, the community centre and other spaces. At each stage the
learner needs to establish their co-ordinates through a process of establishing self-identity within a community.

The application of CoP theory in instrumental circumstances almost always presumes the pre-existence of groups who share community of practice attributes. Communities of practice are emergent organisations with tacit but clearly identifiable rules and other signs of identity: shared goals, shared values, shared symbolic artefacts. These may be codified but as often as not tacit community rules transgress or subvert codified, formal rules. We start from the position that although it now commonplace to recognise the existence of CoPs, the processes underpinning their development are still poorly understood. In particular, it has been found to be difficult in practice to create or facilitate the development of CoPs.

As a move towards better understanding of community formation, facilitation and development, this symposium will consider three emergent international educational communities of practice working both in and through Web2.0 environments."

And now to the videos.

First up is George Roberts whose presentation is entitled 'Emerging Oxymorons'

Second is Karsten Wolf who presents 'Communities of Practice in World of Warcraft'.

The third presentation is 'Communities of Practice and Identities' by Tore Hoel.

Hope you enjoy them.

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