Final Paper

Beverly Wang
Professor Liang
English Composition 2A
9 January 2009
Community of Practice Help Students Participate
What is Community of Practice? Communities of Practice (CoP) are a key element in modern organizations. The term community of practice has been brought up in the 1990s. It’s a group formed by people with the same specific interesting. For example: a group of students working on the presentations, a group of white collar workers working on similar problems. The concept has turned out to provide a useful perspective on knowing and learning. A growing number of people and organizations are now focusing on communities of practice as a key to improving their performance.
Every people has a domain of their interest, members of this domain can engage together to have activities, make discussions and share their material. But members of community of practice do not necessarily work together. For instance, they can meet in cafes to discuss the game they were playing on the Internet. And in the communities of practice, members seeking their experience with their partners. No matter what sizes of communities of practice we are in or what style we and our partners meet and discuss, we all belong to communities of practice.
By the way, community of practice can be also used in education. Because of this concept, educators can have the opportunities to embed what they learned and social relations, and educators have to create opportunities for students to solve real problems with adults or friends, in real learning situation.
When I first heard this topic in the class, professor mentioned some connections with my issue paper. After that, I searched some materials about this concept. I realized that what we do in school can be as communities of practice. According to Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott and William M. Snyder(2003) Cultivating communities of practice a guide to managing knowledge. When we want to start a cop, we have to start small and expect surprises instead of results. And get contact with interested people inside and outside your organization. Then show the outcome and let others benefit of your activity. Last but not least, don’t bother too much, whether your interaction is a CoP or not. You will realize it in time.
Recalling those activities I have joined and compared with the idea of communities of practice. When I joined those activities, first, we have a leader, and usually there is a secondary leader. Then the leader would divided us in some different groups, all the groups have their specific things to do. And about a week or two, we have to report to the leader what we have done in those days. Each group can be called as a community of practice. When we make discussions, we have the same goals, because we want to achieve the goals, we can make up our minds to make all things in order or even perfect. And take my learning in college as an example. In college, we have many discussions in classes. During the discussions, the members would have brainstorming. All members can share their own opinions and thoughts. And other members even can overthrow what you said, but they have to make their opinions reasonable and make you think their ideas are more constructive than yours. We can get some new ideas through our discussions, those ideas that we may never think of, or because of this idea, our brain would flash into other more interesting ideas.
Sometimes, communities of practice would face a problem that is people may think they are peripheral guys, they may think they are abandoned or have uncomfortable feelings when they participate CoP. Why do those feeling would come from? When we participate in a group, at first, we may be appointed what we have to do by authorities. If we are be appointed some jobs that we think not important at all, or not related much to the core. We may think that whether our authorities think we are not able to do more difficult one.
I have those feelings when I participated in activities. When those bad feelings came to my mind. I would tell myself that what I do today may help me someday during my life trip. And all the experience I have gone through can be a lesson to me. Even though sometimes, I would think that authorities did not respect me, because of this reason, I really want to make all the things in order or even perfect to make other people know that I am the person you want.
The article I put in research and annotations mentioned there are so many choices can be seen in school. It may be overwhelming, but getting involved in new activities with new people is a fun way to challenge yourself. No matter what choice we take, we all have to get involved in what we joined. Because of involving, we can learn what we want to learn. Therefore if we did not pay much attention or not care at all, we got nothing. We all want to get benefits from those extracurricular activities we joined. When we joined those extracurricular activities, we get the chance to explore our physical creative, social, political, and career interests with like-minded people.
Besides, if we want to difference between people, it is a good way to join clubs. Because of joining clubs, we have the opportunities to meet people who are different from you. Those programs can bring youth together. By doing this, we can also learn how to make friends and talk with those people when we first meet them. That is to say how to conquer the nervous when we first step into an unfamiliar place. We can learn other skills we won’t learn in the classroom. On the other days, we may use those skills when we are in working. Take Apple and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs for an instance, when he was in college, he joined a calligraphy club. In this club he learned many different styles of calligraphy. When he invented the first line of Macintosh computers, he used this skill he learned in the club to input those special styles of calligraphy in Macintosh computers. It made Macintosh computers have the unique forms of printed characters.
But we still have to find the right activities for us. At first, we have to review all the activities our school offers and listen to other students’ experience to make choices. In different CoPs, we would have different roles. No matter what roles we play, we are important. Each role can not be excluded in communities of practice. Through those clubs, we have experienced, we can learn many things, such as how to get involved in, how to play your roles good and how to make ourselves progress.
I searched on the Youtube about communities of practice. I found this video. (http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=be_k4BH2EvU&eurl=http://beverlyw.blogspot.com/2008/10/community-of-practice.html)This video is mainly discussing about a community of practice in the Internet called NAAE. The narrator is a teacher, so she took educators as an example. She said educators had questions, problems, and great ideas, but they don’t have many channels to share or ask for help. NAAE created a place in the Internet for educators ask each other questions, post resources they want to share with the friends online , help connect each educator.
We all know whatever questions or problems we have , there probably another educator there who has answer or advice. But without NAAE CoP, they don’t know who you are and when you need help. Through NAAE community of practice, they can get together, and discuss together. It is organized, so it’s easy for you to find what you want.
The narrator, Carol, a high school teacher, she has taught for four years. She wants to open some new classes not in her speciality-planting, she wants to know how to teach well, and not let her students in chaos. But she can’t anybody to help her by her side. Then she thinks of community of practice. She posts questions there. In NAAE, she finds so many materials about planting , there are so many advices , and someone even upload worksheets, which Carol can share with the whole class. Because of this, she does a great job in the class. After a semester, she even sets up her own blog for planting.
Even though this video is very like advertising, it reminds us how importance community of practice is. Through our life, no matter what careers we take, we all have problems to ask. Therefore, community of practice in the Internet is a good way for us to let our questions have answers, we can also get other people’s experience, later we can even share our own experience. And in the Internet, those people are from so many different countries. We would not limit ourselves in one corner, special life experience can make our life more colorful.
After watching the video, I have checked the Internet, NAAE.( http://naae.ca.uky.edu:8080/clearspace_community/index.jspa). It is a really fantastic website. So many different regions are posted, it seems like no matter what your question is, you can find your answers there, so when you have problems, go ahead and have a try.
Since Community of Practice is still confusing in Taiwan, so I found a periodical to help everybody realize communities of practice.
Like what I have said, communities of practice is still confusing in Taiwan, so Ministry of Education starts a plan about how to make innovation and knowledge management connected with community of practice. Creativity and innovation have become more and more important, if you are a guy with those talents, you have the advantage to compete with others. But the education in Taiwan now seems not put much emphasis on social education, this make our children know how to study but do not know how to jump out from books. Due to this reason and the force of globalization, Community of Practice is used to stimulate our total creativity and innovation capability.
Many multi-national companies have used CoPs to develop their advantages of competition. Although enterprises are an important part in our society, we can not let our children to know how to progress their ability of social education until they go to the society. It is too cruel and late to know.
When we are in schools, we have to know what things happened around the world, and we have to make our knowledge renew everyday, so we have to keep learning new ideas. This article takes P&G as an example. P&G is an international company with many brands in the market like Oral-B and Pert. P&G uses community of practice as a way to identify and expand their new way of research and development. CoP plays an important role in this company.
However teams and communities are two things, communities can be used on the Internet, that is to say, on the virtual way. For example, electronic community and Network Learning Community, so we students can get on the Internet and take a look at those communities and even join in. by joining those communities, we can make friends from many different countries and learn what we can not learn in schools.
I joined a activity held by ASUS, a famous computer company, this semester. It is called campus CEO. In CEO, I met so many people with the same interest as me. We can discuss the surveys in the market or the product we are ready to make a research on. This is a really special experience during my college life, I think everyone can have a try in what they have interest in.
During our life, we have so many chances to meet different people, when we are in different Community of Practice, I think all of us have to seize the opportunities to know the people from dissimilar domain.










References
1. Richard McDermott and William M. Snyder(2003) Cultivating Communities of Practice a Guide to Managing Knowledge.
2. Sy-Feng Wang,Kai-Ming Chen(2002,DEC.)Community-of-Practice and Creativity: Theory & Implication.[Electronic version]. 社會教育學刊.
(http://www70.psy.fju.edu.tw/sfwang/paper/COPcreativity.pdf)
3. http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/definitions.shtml
4. NatlAgEducators(2008, May 16) Youtube
http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=be_k4BH2EvU&eurl=http://beverlyw.blogspot.com/search/label/annotation
5. http://naae.ca.uky.edu:8080/clearspace_community/index.jspa