I am currently writing a chapter regarding open and networked learning. I have used the term Personal Learning Network (PLN) dozens of times over the last few years, and have seen it mentioned countless times in blog and microblog posts, and other forms of media. However, I cannot seem to find a solid reference or definition for the concept of PLN. I sent out several email messages asking people if knew of an existing article or reference for the PLN definition, and I have yet to receive a response. About the best lead I could find was a post from Stephen Downes that mentioned “Dave Warlick has taken the concept of the Personal Learning Environment, renamed it (to Personal Learning Network).” Via Dennis T OConnor, Sia Vogel 
What syndrome is your organization suffering from? 
The NDLR actively uses social networking tools as mediums of communication and collaboration, which have successfully helped to foster and maintain over thirty active communities of practice enabling members to communicate with each other, collaborate on the development of reusable learning objects and share best practice teaching and learning initiatives, which have resulted in the development of over 20,000 open and reusable learning objects. The use of social networking features within the NDLR communities supports best practice in the development of quality education resources and facilitates national collaboration, irrespective of the institutions that academics are representing. The community areas are self-moderated by community members, allowing academics to collaborate and work on their own initiatives in their own free time with other community members. Due to the support and success to the social networking aspects of the NDLR community areas, the NDLR will continue to develop and enhance existing social networking features and technologies based on the needs of the NDLR community. 
You are at a competitive disadvantage if you do not embrace the power of social media and understand how it applies to the enterprise. Your competitors are already there. 
Use these four primary catalysts for transformation to optimise your company's journey and change your business mentality... 
Two heads are often better than one when it comes to working creatively. Here are ten tools and apps that help journalists to collaborate with others. 
Using e-Portfolios to create a learning community and to support assessment and reflective practice - at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (formerly the RSAMD) 
Another great example of communities of practice and collaboration in action! The Azimuth Project is an international collaboration to create a focal point for scientists and engineers interested in saving the planet. Our goal is to make clearly presented, accurate information on the relevant issues easy to find, and to help people work together on our common problems. 
(BOOK): "Wikipedia's style of collaborative production has been lauded, lambasted, and satirized. A compilation of best practices and lessons learned by members of TheCR Network - a peer network of community, social media, and social business leaders. How do you get ideas to spread, especially in organizational communities of practice (often behind the firewall) to encourage innovation? 
Archive For The ‘Communities Of Practice’ Category |
OK, these skills are not actually “new” – they’ve always been present – but perhaps they have not always been as visible as they should have been, as Oscar Berg explains in The collaboration pyramid (or iceberg). But, as businesses transform into social businesses, the social workplace is going to become more and more reliant on these skills. 
This is very basic, but still a fantastic101. The potential for communities of practice in an organization is enormous. But their success hinges on a wide range of factors—from readiness to structure, champions to members. 
In recent years, there has been a rapid growth in the use of social networking tools (e.g., Facebook) and social media in general, mainly for social, recreational, and entertainment purposes (Smith, Salaway, & Caruso, 2009). Many educators believe that these tools offer new educational affordances and avenues for students to interact with each other and with their teachers or tutors. Considering the traditional dropout rate problem documented in distance courses (Rovai, 2003; Woodley, 2004), these tools may be of special interest for distance education institutions as they have the potential to assist in the critical “social integration” associated with persistence (Sweet, 1986; Tinto, 1975). However, as distance students are typically older than regular on-campus students (Bean & Metzner, 1985; Rovai, 2003), little is known about their expertise with social media or their interest in harnessing these tools for informal learning or collaborating with peers. 
Just read the first chapter (which you can download for free). Looks like a promising book! 
One of the more interesting areas of crowdsourcing today is in the area of collective knowledge and intelligence – often referred to as Q&A.
With these sites, the propensity for useless and unorganized information is high, as anyone can answer, and there is nobody there to vet backgrounds or experience of respondents. So of course, all of these helpful tips should be taken with a grain of salt. The problems that arise with such sites markedly go away when you can ask your questions to a community who actually has some expertise in the areas of concern. 
Key Findings From the Research 1. Business managers and IT managers are beginning to work more closely together to co-own and co-sponsor emergent collaboration initiatives. 
I started and ended my presentation with a provocative statement: collaboration is the IT investment of the decade. Let me first define what I mean by collaboration: collaboration is a combination of social, mobile, video and virtual elements, and must be accessible from all types of devices. IT professionals will spend a lot of their time delivering a holistic integrated collaboration solution for their customers, partners and employees in the next 10 years. What makes this a bit more exciting is each component of collaboration is going through significant transformation. 
What does your internal collaboration enterprise social graph look like? 
As an online student, making connections and working with your classmates on school projects has an added layer of complexity due to the delivery format of your courses. You may all be in the same class, but logging in from different geographic areas and at different times. So, how can you complete those group assignments, form study groups, and ask each other questions? While your school's Learning Management System (e.g. eCollege, Moodle, Blackboard) may provide some assistance with these tasks, you will also find a wide variety of tools available to help you work together online. Let's take a closer look at some of the free options you may want to consider and explore how they can be used to support your coursework. 
This is a comparison of two communities of practice.
In one of them, the content is 80% or more "knowledge push". Most of this content either comes from the administrator or from the manager, and it consists of thought pieces or of snippets of news or links to articles. Usage is low and only 3% of the target staff have contributed. This community is pretty dead, really. In the second (a community of practice I subscribe to for research purposes, even though it's on a topic I don't work on) usage is high, contribution is high, and a check of the messages from the past month or two shows that 93% of the content is "knowledge pull." The content is from people in the business with a problem to solve or a question to answer or a need to fill. This is a very live and active community.
Why the difference? 
For the last 3 years we have surveyed members across the communities of practice to find out what they really think. 1. Using CoPs generally |
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