Journal 6

The book Digital Habitats by Wenger starts off talking about communities of practice, which in my opinion is the same thing as a club for all ages, especially involving adults. Wenger puts a community of practice (coP) as a group that has a shared interest in a certain area, there is shared basic knowledge, teaching new comers, communication among members, building understanding in the group, if there is a known leader, and if there are any references to outside sources for creating their standards of practice. When you think about it, there are so many standing communities of practice! While deciding what to do my project on I had so many ideas, but then would hesitate because it seemed too easy! I thought about doing a soccer team that belonged to a specific soccer club, or fantasy football because my friends are obsessed with it, but there wasn't a lot of teaching the new comers how to pick a draft, so I chose Camp Pendleton Marine Base. I work at the base twice a week, so it was a perfect choice. Even a school is a community of practice, or a church. It is almost hard to think of something that may not be considered a coP.

Something that stood out to me later on in the Wenger readings was the realization of our class being a community of practice. We all have shared interests in education,  there is a shared basic knowledge of education and technology, we all look to Paul, Valerie, and Bill for our masters of knowledge, we are teaching each other about different perspectives on books and teaching new technologies to some. Brian helped me understand some basic knowledge of adobe pro, and Simon unknowingly introduced me to keynote where I was able to add my voice to a power point. Using the knowledge of the people around you may be your "richest resource" is what Wenger says.