Learning in a sandbox

After being “a friend” and lurking for a while, i became a full (paying) member of the CP Square (CP2) community. CP Square is a community of practice about communities of practice.

Ever since i started my studies in HRD i’m interested in social forms of learning, communities of practice are one of them. Especially with the growing attention towards the use of networked technologies like elgg, mahara, twitter and yammer for facilitating learning processes i felt the need to emerge myself deeper in the theory of community of practice (CoP). My customers at Stoas Learning, often come to me from a technological perspective. They ask what the technology could do and how they could use it in their organization. For social technologies like elgg to work in an organization, i believe you need to look beyond the technology and develop a clear concept of the organization’s knowledge processes and how you would think the technology could support those processes. I believe that if we are talking about social learning processes, the theory of communities of practice could often help us to gain insight how these processes work. Thats the reason why i’m expanding my professional services towards consulting on CoP in relation to the use of technolgies. I became a member of CP2 to further develop myself in these practices and moreover to become part of a network of people who already have long years of experience in this field beyond using any technology.

So far it resulted already in a great (Skype) meeting with John Smith, co-author of the book“Digital Habitats”.  Today i’ve met with Joitske Hulsebosch, she’s a Dutch consultant in this field and an active member of CP2. I’m looking forward to all other learning experiences that are yet to come!