Communities of Practice

I have been following several communities of practice for a few years now from a peripheral trajectory (I like that term better than lurking – which sounds so devious). I receive email notifications almost daily and scan through the topics with the occasional time to review a few. I always archive them and think I will go back; that rarely happens due to time constraints. So, even though it took some time, I really appreciated the opportunity to read and become more involved in community interactions as a result of our project this week. While I am enjoying the exposure to many new potential teaching and learning tools, I still find it a bit of an overload to explore everything we have been discussing. So I am taking it in chunks and carefully evaluating the tools that work best for me in my environment. I am also planning to make reading and/or interacting one of the routine things I do each day along with catching up on emails. I think if I can follow the inbound trajectory path slowly, I will be more likely to continue and begin to see ways that I can build a functioning community of practice in my organization.