<div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 12:39 PM, David Farning <<a href="mailto:dfarning@sugarlabs.org">dfarning@sugarlabs.org</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Caroline, Do have suggestions for other readings about how Communities of Practice form and  operate, particularly in the field of education.  I feel like I have my head wrapped around documentation, development, and deployment COP's.  I am still totally confused how to engage educators. There seem to be significant cultural differences between people who sit in front of a computer all day and those who spend their days standing between a blackboard and and a classroom full of kids. </blockquote><div> Excellent observation!  There is lots of literature on CoP for teachers and the bottom line is its pretty hard to do. Personally think some of the important difference are. <ul><li> when we computer people interact with our online CoP we can do so as part of our normal workflow.  We are sitting looking at our inbox anyway. Teachers normal workflow is standing with the blackboard, they have to concously devote some of thier nonteaching time to participation.</li> <li>Learning Styles, if you choose to be a teacher you probably really enjoy face-to-face interaction with people.</li></ul>Here are some readings on CoP from my class last year. <a href="http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm">http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm</a>  Schlager, M., Fusco, J. & Schank, P (2002). <a href="http://tappedin.org/tappedin/web/papers/2002/TIEvolution.pdf">Evolution of an on-line education community of practice.</a> In K. A. Renninger and W. Shumar (Eds.), Building virtual communities: Learning and change in cyberspace. NY: Cambridge University Press, 129-158.  you can see all the papers on Tapped In - probably the most studied on line CoP for teachers - <a href="http://tappedin.org/tappedin/web/papers/index.jsp">http://tappedin.org/tappedin/web/papers/index.jsp</a> This year the professor Dede talked about a program in Alabama that I think has some relevance for our work.  It was a blended online-inperson program that created teacher teams at each school and then connected a few teams together with virutal tools.  I think this sort of blended program has a lot of promise for Sugar and OLPC.  I've asked for some pointers to more details on that program. I see a strong link between teacher training a creating teacher CoP.  I'm in the process of learning and thinking about how Prof. Stone's work with WIDE World as well as what OLPC is currently doing in terms of teacher training.  At WIDE they seem to  very conciously create and build their community of pracitce although interestingly, its not the top billing for the program, they emphasis the teacher training. Look at the last paragraph on this page: <a href="http://wideworld.pz.harvard.edu/overview/whatwedo/approach.cfm">http://wideworld.pz.harvard.edu/overview/whatwedo/approach.cfm</a> Technology for Developing Communities of Learners WIDE World programs demonstrate how to use new technologies to strengthen teaching and to build reflective, collaborative learning communities. Participants in our online courses exchange ideas with experienced coaches and peers and have the opportunity to join an online international community of innovative educators. And I also see a very concious path for teachers to become increasingly engaged with the program experts and leaders here. <a href="http://wideworld.pz.harvard.edu/overview/">http://wideworld.pz.harvard.edu/overview/</a>  </div></div>