On blogs and CoP’s

Joitske Hulsebosch blogged about the potential of using blogs with communities of practices (Cop’s). Joitske gives four very useful ways in which blogs can support CoP’s but I just want to focus on one of them. Quoting Joitske:

“A weblog with summaries of discussions can be a repository for the community. An example is the weblog Everything you always wanted to know about capacity development . It is a weblog from ICCOcapacity building advisor”.

Using a blog as a repository for summaries of debate and rich content is a great idea. Some threads in a vigorous discussion in a CoP can be lost in the rumble-tumble of debate. Sometimes the debate is at such an intellectual depth that a summary of the salient points would be a nice feature to have to bring the level of discussion into a broader realm of understanding. This latter point was highlighted for me with a sterling debate among three key protagonists on actkm recently - a debate I really enjoyed but at times found difficult to follow (not helped by my part-time tracking of this exchange at one of my contract jobs).

I liked the thinking behind Joitske’s use of blogs to support CoP’s. As a result, I am doing some thinking of my own as to how weaving narrative into the blog summary may be used to create another dimension to understanding rich content.