Communities of practice

members have some shared goal, interest, need, or activity that provides the
primary reason for belonging to the community
• members engage in repeated active participation and there are often intense
interactions, strong emotional ties and shared activities occurring between
participants
• members have access to shared resources and there are policies for determining
access to those resources
• reciprocity of information, support and services between members
• shared context (social conventions, language, protocols).


Users should be able to...
• Tell who is speaking
• Provide feedback to a speaker verbally or non verbally
• Follow a conversational thread when there are multiple speakers
• Backtrack on a conversation
• Know if conversation is being logged
• Signal which conversational thread they are attending to
• "Hear" everything that is said (locally) with enough time to process it
• Communicate with different "voices" (e.g. say, emote, think, change real voice)
• Indicate level of engagement (e.g. be able to indicate when otherwise engaged in
real world conversation).

Widening the Net: Workshop Report on the Theory and Practice of Physical and Network Communities. Steve Whittaker, Ellen Isaacs & Vicki O'Day

Wiki - supporting communites of practice

Video article explaining how wikki works as a support for communities of practice.

Fridge magnets - online

Communities of practice relies on an active , sharing of informatation about a common topic or theme. This game allows people to interact at once using flash and could be a good basis for an online message board where inforamtion and thoughts are collected and displayed together ( in real time)

http://www.kongregate.com/games/QRious/fridge-magnets