Monday, October 24, 2005

I did it!



After thinking and hesitating about blogging for a long time, I finally opened my blog! (thanks Beth for pestering me :-))

I will not blog about my bicycle tyre punctures and the weather (but for those who would have been interested in this: today no puncture but yes, rain..) but about communities of practice for development. I intend to use this blog to track and record some of my reflections and found materials, without having the pretention that it will be exhaustive about everything happening in that field.

My three main questions are:

1. What are practical examples of how a community of practice (CoP) perspective has been employed for learning and innovation in the development sector? What can we learn from those examples? (corporate cops and inter-organisational cops, north-north, south-south and south-north-south)

2. What are the cultural assumptions in the CoP theory which align or don’t align with other cultural settings? What are the practical implications of this?

3. How are technologies employed to nurture CoPs for development? How does this impact the functioning of the CoPs? How to mix online and face-to-face collaboration?

Or in short:

1. Practical examples

2. Culture

3. Technology

I'm really curious about blogging and want to experiment and see whether it stimulates me to actively look for information and reflect systematically on the topic. (...?)

3 comments:

Beth Kanter said...

Bravo! Clapping my hands. Loud Applause!

brendah said...

Well done, Joitske. This is great. I enjoyed the bit about the Ampelmann. I found that so interesting. Here in SA we have tried to merge so many cultures into one nation and it made me begin to wonder about our symbols of deeper cultural significance. Now, about those punctures .... :-)

Bill Williams said...

The Ampelman is a great symbol to start off with.

I was really taken with the image itself when I went to Berlin a few years back - mainly because of its visual impact; it’s nice to know more about it’s cultural history.