The CPSquare bookclub is launching a poll to select the chapters from "Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators" for inclusion in their on-line event today (July 31, 2008) 

If you have seen the book and have a favourite chapter that you would like to vote for - or would just like to be able to discuss the books and/or Communities of Practice in/for education, but have not got around to registering for the event - this is your chance!

CPSquare have redesigned their website since my last mail - the new URL is: 

http://cpsquare.org/2008/07/communities-of-practice-creatin

I hope to meet some of you there.

What book? - "Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators" edited by myself, Paul Hildreth and Isabelle Bourdon.

http://www.chris-kimble.com/CLEE/index.html

What book club? - the CPsquare book club (I know some of you are already members of CPsquare, but this is for those who are not) will be reading selected chapters from the book.

http://www.cpsquare.org/events/index.htm

So, if you want to have the opportunity to discuss what you have been doing with others who share a common interest - from around the world - this is your chance.  There will be some synchronous activities (e.g. teleconferences), but most of the discussion should be asynchronous (so you should not need to get up in the middle of the night to chat to somebody on the other side of the planet).

The selection of the chapters will begin in late July and the discussions will start a week later - all you need is a copy of the book and the will to participate ... oh yes, and 50 USD if you are not a member of CPsquare (it is free to members but they will charge anybody else, don't blame me, I am not a member and I didn't make the rule).

I hope to meet some of you there on-line.

The group for my book (doh! - must get out of publicity mode) that I set up on Facebook seemed to be rather odd to me.  It started with the idea of a place for "authors to meet their public", the membership, grew and grew, but nothing seemed to happen.  Intrigued by the way the group was growing, one of my research students tried asking people how they got to the group - with hardly any response.

Then, I started thinking about Facebook and LinkedIn.  There is a lot of cross over between my membership of LinkedIn and Facebook, but my group of 'friends' on Facebook are not the same as my 'contact network' on LinkedIn.  The two platforms have a different look and feel, they seem to exist for subtly different purposes and, in comparison to Emerge, Yahoo Groups or even the good old-fashioned UseNet mailing groups, seem to be fairly static and lifeless.

So why do so many people sign up to these groups?  One answer was provided by somebody called Sue Wolff who replied to a question (What is the point of this group?) I posted to the group for the book; she explained, "people join groups in Facebook ... to re-territorialize our representations - providing ourselves with a sense that we exist due to our expressed and signed affiliations".

It rang a bell with me.  Previously I had used the, perhaps less savoury, metaphor of 'scent marking' to describe this sort of thing.  People come; make their mark and leave, occasionally returning to re-stake their claim to a digital identity through their association with a particular group or a set of ideas.  So, viewed in this way, sites like Facebook and LinkedIn become what Sue described as "aggregation lists" rather than the sites for active participation.

Do others have a view on this?  Can sites be 'designed' to act as territorial marker, a convenient rock or tree trunk for us to spray our digital ... no, perhaps I should not go there

Normal (bearded) service will be resumed shortly

In the early part of next year, I will be publishing a two-volume book of edited papers called "Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators".  The first volume deals mainly with co-located Communities of Practice while the second volume deals mainly with Distributed / Virtual Communities of Practice.  In all, there are about 40 chapters with authors from 14 different countries around the world.

Don't worry, I will tell you all about the book when it is published, but for the time being, I thought that you might like to know about another interesting use of Facebook.

It turned out that a number of the authors had pages on Facebook, so I have set up a Facebook group for the book which has a link to a site which contains the abstracts for all of the chapters, but more importantly lists all of the authors who have Facebook profiles (more accurately, all of those who have profiles and want to be listed - which is not quite the same as all of the authors).

The idea was that those who were interested could look at the abstracts and, if they wanted, contact the authors.  I know a number of students (mainly in the US) have joined the group, but as far as I know, only one has made a query.

If you have a Facebook profile and want to have a look for your self, feel free:

Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators

I feel that I must prefix my first post with an apology - I came across this project some time ago and thought "the creation of a sustainable community of practice (CoP) that will develop and exploit new emergent technologies for use in educational settings" - that's for me!  ... and then did nothing about it.  I will try to make more of a positive contribution - starting now.

For those of you who are within travelling distance of York, there is going to be a seminar on SNA (Social Network Analysis) entitled "Discovering and Analysing Social Networks through the Mining of Logs from Collaborative Tools" on the 5th of November.

The seminar will be presented by Laurence Lock Lee, who has worked in this area for some time (he wrote a chapter in a book on CoPs I edited a few years back).  The focus is not directly on Education, but if you are interested in the application of SNA, I am sure that this will prove to be a practical and informative talk.

For those who want to know more, there is a web site. I have also uploaded a .pdf file.

The seminar is absolutely free (I can't promise a firework display, but I might be able to offer coffee and biscuits) so if you are going to come, could you mail me and let me know so I can attempt to plan things in advance.