The Wales-Wide Web

Wilfred has replied to my previous post on Blogging and Communities. I said "Learning is a social activity. Blogging does not, on its own, support the social aspect of learning - neither does it support communities of practice...initiatives like EduCause, Edublogs and Elgg have been so successful - because they provide a community as well as blogging tools. " (See also Dave's comments on this post)

Wilfred goes on to say: "the problem with traditional communities of practices is imho the lack of ownership. A network of weblogs of people with a common interest could be a good alternative.

Furthermore you could argue that weblogs are great tools for individual reflection which is necessary for learning as a social activity...... If our communities shall succeed, we need to create ownership, passion and a sense of urgency."

This raises many more questions about the nature of communities of practice and issues we need to resolve in a practical and applied sense.

Ettiene Wenger defines Communities of practice as follows:

"Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly."

He goes on to qualify this with three further 'critical characteristics".

"The domain: A community of practice ... has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people.

The community: In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other. A website in itself is not a community of practice.

The practice: Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction."

Firstly, I do not understand what wilfred means when he talks about a problem with lack of ownership of communities if practice. Of course lots of management consultants have jumped on the bandwagon and are claiming to build communities of practice 'for' the practitioners. But if you accept Ettienne Wenger's definition these are not really communities of practice as such.

Now back to the blogging question. Yes - I am sure blogging can provide the passion. But are trackback, categories and tagging enough for a "shared competence" and "shared practice'". Remember the blogging is not the practice - it is just a means of communication. I really don't think networks of blogs, on their own, are enough.. I think we have to go far further in developing tools which allow people to communicate in a way which expresses elements of the nature of the practice. Blogging standards will, I suspect, play a big part. But we are not there yet.

More to come.

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