Week3 Blog Posting#6 - Communities of Practice

When I started this program at Full Sail,  I had no idea how far and fast the development of the internet had come through the years.  When my school district began this atomic learning direction, I became intrigued and excited thinking that our district is on the cutting edge of technology. To my dismay, I came to the realization that our school district with all its web 2.0 tools and applications are extremely behind the rest of the country and world. To make things worse, I have discovered that Rural Alaska’s education surpasses our metropolitan community in technology.

Here I had planned to brag that our school district could be a role model for communities of practice, because students, staff, administration (at all levels), support staff, and parents are all tied together through the internet using a program that links us all together. Parents can know instantly if their kids are ditching class, in trouble, has slipping grades, even what the kids are eating at lunch. Newsletters for each school, the district or a single classroom can be accessed from the websites.. As I learn more about communities of practice from the book “Here Comes Everybody” by Clay Shirky (2008,p.101) I desired to search further through the internet and discovered that there were thousands of these communities.  Shockingly my best friend and her husband belonged such a community in the gamming cluster.

This was a big disappointment, I did not expect that educational communities and gamming communities could mingle with each other, which they do indirectly through cluster sharing, an area I’m just learning about.  To make sense of this all, I had to purchase an additional book called,” A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization: Strategies, Tactics, and tools for succeeding in the Social Web” by Deltina Hay.  I figured that I needed all the help I can, so that I could be more useful in supporting my school district through its growth in this technical age.

To clarify where I’m coming from as a former teacher now subbing, I recall how just a few years ago I was a stay at home mom, involved in the many mom and tot programs, and gathering with other mothers in support of each other. The stay at home mothers were known for the practice of community and would now be considered as, ”The old school of Community.” Lost in the Utopia of motherhood, my undergraduate studies seemed to be obsolete.  So I mustarded up enough courage to return to school only to discover that the world has passed me bye. What’s worse is that my 80 year old, mother is more tech savvy than I. What kind of 80 year old waits on Twitters’ doorstep for her kids to register? I still haven’t gotten over that event.