40,186 research outputs found

    Computer Mediated Communications and Communities of Practice

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    Within the Knowledge Management context, there is growing interest in computer support for group knowledge sharing and the role that Communities of Practice play in this. Communities of Practice are groups of individuals with a common purpose and who share some background, language or experience. The community is regenerated as newcomers join the group and old-timers leave. The newcomers have access to the old- timers and learn from them. This generally takes place through situated learning. New group knowledge is also created as members of the community have a problem to solve and swap experiences and anecdotes to solve the problem, possibly arriving at a novel solution. This may then be further shared through anecdotes so that it eventually becomes part of the group's store of collective knowledge. Communities of Practice provide an excellent forum for knowledge sharing and a vital question is whether the new communications media, which provide new possibilities for collaboration and distributed working, could support the existence of such groups in a distributed environment. This question takes on an added relevance with the rapid internationalization of business that can spread the distribution over national boundaries posing problems of cultural and temporal as well as physical distance. This paper reports on a case study which was the first stage in exploring whether Computer Mediated Communications technologies (CMCs) can support distributed international Communities of Practice. The aim of the case study was to explore the possible existence of Communities of Practice in an international organization, to identify such groups and to ascertain the media used.Computer Mediated Communications technologies, CMC, Communities of Practice, CoP, Knowledge Management, KM

    Just picking it up? Young children learning with technology at home

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    We describe a two-year empirical investigation of three- and four-year-old children's uses of technology at home, based on a survey of 346 families and 24 case studies. Using a sociocultural approach, we discuss the range of technologies children encounter in the home, the different forms their learning takes, the roles of adults and other children, and how family practices support this learning. Many parents believed that they do not teach children how to use technology. We discuss parents' beliefs that their children 'pick up' their competences with technology and identify trial and error, copying and demonstration as typical modes of learning. Parents tend to consider that their children are mainly self-taught and underestimate their own role in supporting learning and the extent to which learning with technology is culturally transmitted within the family

    A Review of the "Digital Turn" in the New Literacy Studies

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    Digital communication has transformed literacy practices and assumed great importance in the functioning of workplace, recreational, and community contexts. This article reviews a decade of empirical work of the New Literacy Studies, identifying the shift toward research of digital literacy applications. The article engages with the central theoretical, methodological, and pragmatic challenges in the tradition of New Literacy Studies, while highlighting the distinctive trends in the digital strand. It identifies common patterns across new literacy practices through cross-comparisons of ethnographic research in digital media environments. It examines ways in which this research is taking into account power and pedagogy in normative contexts of literacy learning using the new media. Recommendations are given to strengthen the links between New Literacy Studies research and literacy curriculum, assessment, and accountability in the 21st century

    From Kansas to Queensland: Global learning in preservice elementary teacher education

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    Communication of information between groups of humans has been extended through out history progressing from smoke signals, drum beats, message couriers, post, telegraph, telephone and now the ICT. The time between the utterance of a message and the reception of that message has progressively decreased. We are now able to communicate relatively cheaply, simultaneously sharing and responding to ideas and thoughts on a scale never previously possible. Although the technology exists to make possible easy access to people in all parts of the world, we still lack understandings of the aspirations and sensitivities of other cultures with whom we can communicate. This project supported pre-service elementary teachers in two countries ā€“ Australia and the United States ā€“ to engage in collaborative learning through Internet communications. The purpose of the project was to develop greater understanding of otherā€™s cultures, and practices in teaching elementary students. Students attending an Australian preservice primary science methods course were matched with a cohort of undergraduate preservice elementary student teachers from a university in the United States studying an integrated mathematics science methods course. Over a six-week period the students engaged in the computer-mediated communication and were encouraged to learn about mutual cultural practices and primary/elementary science education in both countries. The outcomes demonstrated that students involved in the project benefited from an array of different and enriching learning experiences. Students benefited through enhanced understanding of the teaching of science and an appreciation of the common problems confronting science education in both countries. However, there was little engagement in debate or discussion of individual differences and the cultural context of each otherā€™s country even when opportunities presented themselves. Nevertheless, the on-line tasks provided the pre-service teachers with the experience and confidence to engage their own students in similar global learning initiatives when they become teachers

    Effective Virtual Teams through Communities of Practice

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    This paper examines the nature of virtual teams and their place in the networked economy. It presents a framework for categorising virtual teams and argues that fundamental changes have taken place in the business environment which force people and organisations to operate in 'two spaces' simultaneously: the physical space and the electronic space. It highlights some of the issues of trust and identity that exist in virtual teams and argues that, due to certain barriers, only a small proportion of these teams reach a satisfactory level of performance. Using the evidence from two recent sets of studies, it highlights some of the barriers to effective virtual team working and demonstrates the critical importance of trust and social bonding to the functioning of such teams. It reports on the use of a 'Community of Practice' in a virtual team and argues that this may provide one mechanism for overcoming some of the barriers. Finally, it argues that many of the problems stem from a lack of understanding of the new geography of the information economy and that, rather than accepting the notion that 'geography no longer matters', continued efforts must be made to understand the relationship between the physical world in which we live and the electronic world of virtual team working.Virtual Teams, Communities of Practice, Globalisation, Teleworking, Electronic Space, Physical Space

    Face-to-face and online collaboration: appreciating rules and adding complexity

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    This paper reports how 6-8 year-old children build, play and share video-games in an animated programming environment. Children program their games using rules as creative tools in the construction process. While working both face-to-face and remotely on their games, we describe how they can collaboratively come to explain phenomena arising from programmed or 'system' rules. Focusing on one illustrative case study of two children, we propose two conjectures. First, we claim that in face-to-face collaboration, the children centre their attention on narrative, and address the problem of translating the narrative into system rules which can be =programmedā€˜ into the computer. This allowed the children to debug any conflicts between system rules in order to maintain the flow of the game narrative. A second conjecture is that over the Internet children were encouraged to add complexity and innovative elements to their games, not by the addition of socially-constructed or 'player' rules but rather through additional system rules which elaborate the mini-formalism in which they engaged. This shift of attention to system rules occurred at the same time, and perhaps as a result of, a loosening of the game narrative that was a consequence of the remoteness of the interaction
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