The article by Wenger & Lave on Legitimate peripheral participation is something else! I beleive it has revolutionised thinking about learning, and I seek to understand it better. I have sent the text of one difficult section to Vance and I'd like to know if any one else has read it or wants to. Wonderful meeting you all !

diana

Welcome to Webheads, it is nice to know that you plan to stay with us! As you can see, Vance is a source of inspiration for all of us :-) would love to read the article. Why don't you share it with all of us? You
can write the url in a message or if it is a Word document you can post it to the files section of our Yahoo Group!

Nice to have you with us!!

Dafne Chavez(a Venezuelan in Spain)

The article states that legitimate peripheral participation (i.e. lurking) is key for newcomers to occupational groups, and I would have to agree. When I joined several CALL-related listservs a number of years ago, I found this to be necessary for my socialization and knowledge acquisition process. And knowledge here echoes Atherton's definition of knowledge being distributed by the members of the community rather than existing in books, articles, etc. Chris Johnson also states in the "knowledge domain" that knowledge is "negotiated among the participants, especially the community's experts". The knowledge domain within our current CoP (Webheads in Action) is constantly shifting, and new members as well as continuing members keep learning new tips and practices from each other.

Too me, the concept of CoPs was a new one, but it is a fascinating part of social dynamics.
ATHERTON J S (2002) Learning and Teaching: Situated Learning [On-line]: UK:

Available: http://www.dmu.ac.uk/~jamesa/learning/situated.htm Accessed: 27 January 2003.

Christine Bauer-Ramazani

I've been going through the files that Chris Jones suggested for this week and have also been reading different documents on the subject. They have been eye-openers for me. Besides, they are easy reading and that's good for people like many of us who don't have all the time in the world for this. Let me give you the urls (I hope I'm not repeating myself!):

Etienne Wenger: Interview:
http://www.kmol.online.pt/pessoas/WengerE/entrev_e.html

Seven Principles for Cultivating CoPs:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=2855&t=knowledge

Communities of Practice: learning, meaning, and identity
http://www.ewenger.com/ewCoPToC.html

I also just took a look at ChristineBR's latest suggested readings. Thanks, Christine.

Well, I had already understood from Chris Johnson's fabulous biblio on CoPs that this was an interesting subject, but the more I read about it, the more fascinated I am. To tell you the truth, I think we could easily go talking about this for the whole 8 weeks.

Teresa

According to one of the readings I pointed out a while ago - the article on the 'Seven Principles' -, CoPs can also be f2f groups. There are two examples right at the beginning. In fact, I'm under the impression that the concept of CoP first started out with traditional f2f groups. But, once again, Chris Johnson, the CoP expert, can fill us in on this.

Take a look at 'Themes and ideas: Communities of practice' by E. Wenger at http://www.ewenger.com/ewthemes.html and you'll find several other examples.

'Supporting CoPs' by E. Wenger at http://www.ewenger.com/tech/executive_summary.htm may shed some more light on whether discussion lists are CoPs (see answer #1). Answer #3 sheds light on your initial question about whether "CoPs include social, face-to-face groups or is the definition restricted to online groups".

HTH, Teresa Almeida d'Eca

Regards,
María Irene
Valencia, Venezuela