Step 1: View the Google Doc version using this URL: http://bit.ly/DH-chapter10

Recently a group of students in the Foundations of Communities of Practice workshop completed a Word-Doc version of Chapter 10.  It turned out that the process of responding to the questions was very useful to them and the results were very interesting to compare, even thought the communities represented seemed quite different one from another.

Being able to write in the Word Doc was more useful than the PDF version because the boxes could expand according to how much there was to say about a particular topic for a particular community.  (And in one community that was at a very early stage of development, it was useful to complete just the front end and skip the rest of it.)

Here’s how to make a copy so you can work through the questions that are relevant to your community using Google Docs:

1. 

   Step 2: Save your own copy of the document

   Point your browser to the original: http://bit.ly/DH-chapter10 .  You can’t edit the original version, but anybody can view it.  Log in to Google Docs. (See Step 1.)

2. Save your own copy of the document by selecting “Make a copy” on the drop-down menu under “file”.  Share your copy as appropriate, the more the better. (See Step 2.)
3. Find your new copy in your list of Google Docs and begin the hard / fun part: thinking through all the issues discussed in Chapter 10!  (See Step 3.)

Step 3: Edit your copy, discuss, and share.

We are considering having some systematic group discussions in CPsquare, comparing completed responses for many different communities.  I anticipate that the issues raised in Chapter 10 will be challenging and difficult for some communities, obvious for others, and irrelevant for some.  Understanding more about those differences should be very useful to all of us.

If you have a completed workbook that you would like to present, please let me know.  Either way, stay in touch!

One change that the electronic format will require is that the 40 illustrative stories or vignettes that are shown in the book as floating text boxes won’t float on a page but will show up between paragraphs.  In this case, having to deal with that little detail means that we made a list of all of them.   For some reason such a list was never part of the book the vignettes were not included in the index! Now here’s a list of them.

Fig 1.1 Learning Activities - Page 6.

Fig 5.1 Tools Landscape - page 60

Orientations - page 152

Tool Polarities Map - page 162

Note that there are other resources to download under excerpts and diagrams specifically here.

One of my big hopes is to see people actually put the diagrams and schemes to work.  I struck up a conversation with Derek Moore on Twitter (http://twitter.com/weblearning) because  Nancy White pointed out a diagram that he posted.

After a few exchanges via direct messages in Twitter, we resorted to email.  He shared this diagram, an updated version of the Tools Landscape diagram he had posted on Twitter. His version has fewer tools on it than the version on page 60 of the book and it has some new ones. I was working on a blog post where I wanted to revise the diagram and I was struck by how elegant and clean Derek’s version was.  And very pleased to see someone else put the idea to work.

I thought it was interesting that I misinterpreted “life streaming” as “live streaming” (e.g., video). And I was really surprised and delighted to realize that the .png format can have layers in it.  That is, with software like Adobe’s Fireworks, you can replace layers in Derek’s version of the diagram.  So the conversation keeps going – not only through Twitter, email, blog posts, but via revisions of each other’s diagrams.

But we’re not longer strangers.

This is a great tool to help people visualize the diagram at a distance – when you don’t have the comfy proximity of a white board and a bunch of post it notes. I also love the visual background Gabriele put in – lovely.  You can find the spreadsheet here.

Others have been sharing their spidergrams. I’ve been tagging them on Delicious. You can find my spidergram tags here: http://delicious.com/choconancy/spidergram. Here is one from Sylvia Currie that she did with Gliffy – another way to do the activity:

So why are seeing and sharing these practices useful? Gabriele’s spreadsheet is useful not just because he created the it, but because he tried the work within his organization, saw the need for a “tweak,” the need to “tinker” and improve — and DID IT! Then he shared it back. Sylvia’s gave us another way to “crack the nut.” This is the value of working in the open, of iterating both internally and externally.

THANK YOU, Gabriele and Sylvia. And to the rest of you, do you have a Spidergram story to share?

A couple of people have asked me for more materials related to the Community Orientations Spidergram activity. I have embedded them into some slides now up … Digital Habitats Community Orientation Spidergram Activity.

Here is a hint I should have shared earlier. The “context” orientation is a bit odd on the spidergram. You need to decide if internal orientation is in the middle/exterior towards the outside or reversed. I tend to use internal towards the middle, but I realized my instructions weren’t so clear.

Another way to do it is to ignore the “context” spoke from an internal/external perspective and then do one layer on the spidergram around your internally focused activities. Then with a different color, do another layer on externally focused activities. I’ve done this with a few test cases and it quickly showed that some communities which have both internal and external contexts have very different internal and external activities.

If you use the Notebook, leave a note here with how it does or does not work for you.  We realize some of the material may not make sense without the context of the book.  But we also know it can always be improved. So your comment may contribute towards future iterations!

Flickr CC Image Credit:  wenxin

We’re designing the workshop to support:

• Getting to know each other, each other’s communities
• Creating “a workshop as laboratory”
• Exploring real communities, from an insider’s perspective to see community orientations & technology integration
• Considering the role and activity of the technology stewards in authentic situations
• Exploring the uses of social technologies to stay in touch as well as for sustained inquiry
• Experiencing the design of learning agendas and then configuring technology to pursue those agendas
• Articulate strategies to introduce new social technologies to a community

• Communities of practice theory glimpse
• Community technology stewardship
• Tools and their Integration
• Scanning the Technology Landscape
• Orientations: community experience and configuration of tools
• A More Distributed Future
• A Learning Agenda

Connected futures workshop starts April 28: http://www.cpsquare.org/edu/CP2W2/