CPsquare education news

Workshop alumni write back

One great thing about sending out the occasional newsletter to workshop alumni is that they write back. Sue Huckson, Program Manager at the National Institute of Clinical Studies, in Melbourne, Australia, writes:

Our work is getting more and more international recognition, not only for the application of CoP's in healthcare but its application to support evidence implementation to improve patient care. We are currently reviewing a paper for publication - so hopefully that will be out soon.

The future for us will be interesting, NICS is joining the National Health Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Australia's leading research agency. I think it displays a policy committment from a national perspective to support an evidence implementation agenda with many potential opportunities for NICS. The NHMRC have a strong focus on the implementation of clinical practice guidelines which has become a core activity of the Emergency Care CoP.

Alumni newsletter - January 2007

This edition of a newsletter sent to Alumni and Friends of CPsquare 3 or 4 times a year is another grab-bag of resources and tidbits about communities of practice. And it's also a reminder about two upcoming workshops, one in English and the other in German (beginning January 29 and April 30, respectively). I'd planned to publish it through the "friends of CPsquare" email list, but have found maddening technical problems with the list, so I'm resorting to alternative means.

ARTICLES

When people identify websites, pages or postings about the subject, many of us will tag them as such and you can see what's been tagged recently by "everybody" by checking one of these two links:

http://del.icio.us/tag/communitiesofpractice

http://del.icio.us/tag/communities_of_practice

A less current but perhaps more considred collection of resources is taking form here in a wiki with bibliographic resources on the subject. YOU are invited to contribute: http://cofpractice-biblio.wikispaces.com/ The hope is that it have the bulk of the most important resources and critical notes about the nature and importance of each resource.

BLOGS

A very diverse collection of ideas and reports can be had by looking at blogs by members of the CPsquare community. You will always find something surprising and often find things that are really interesting:

  http://www.cpsquare.org/member_blogs.htm 

The story about how this aggregation of blogs came to be is reported on my blog:

http://www.learningalliances.net/index.php/2006-08-25/a-feed-of-blogs

CPsquare organized a really great dialog in Florence, Italy last Fall. We had the fifth floor of a palazzo to ourselves for 3 days of great convesations and good food. Before and after the dialog we used a blog to support our self-organization and reporting processes:

http://pratodialogue.wordpress.com/

Beverly Trayner and I published an article about the idea of using technology to change the way we meet face-to-face (from a communities of practice point of view) in an ACM publication:

http://elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=best_practices&article=34-1

A similar experiment where Nancy White used a blog to record a speaking tour in Australia is another interesting example of "exposing the practice" using technology. It contains handouts, pictures of food along the way, and even audience feedback:

http://australianoctober.blogspot.com

Etienne, Nancy White and I continue to plug away at our "technology for communities of Practice" report. It has turned out to be about how communities manage their infrastructure, particularly focused around the role of a technology steward. Here's a definition and some comments:

http://www.learningalliances.net/index.php/2006-12-15/definition-of-technology-steward

GLOBALIZATION

Much further afield, you might enjoy this article in The New Yorker about an Australian sociologist's efforts to help reframe the war in Iraq. A lot of interesting ideas about social interaction and learning:

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/061218fa_fact2

At the other extreme from a communities of practice approach, consider the news about TutorVista, which offers unlimited tutoring in dozens of different subjects or for dozens of different tests:

http://www.tutorvista.com/press/mediacover.php

WORKSHOPS

The next offering of the Foundations workshop is scheduled to begin in ONE WEEK, on January 29th. If you know someone who's interested, please let them know:

http://www.cpsquare.org/edu/foundations/

There's a rather massive effort to present the workshop in German starting April 30th. If you or someone you know is interested, drop me a line:

http://www.cpsquare.org/edu/german/