I'm a member of a CoP....

Well, in order to check out a few of the communities that I found, I decided to join a few. Most communities are closed to anonymous contributors so unless you identify yourself, you cannot check out the neighborhood. I have found basically three main types of communities online, social, learning oriented, and communities of practice. The social groups include many types of communities, some with text and video chats such as those in ICQ.com, Windows Live Messenger, some virtual environments such as Second Life.com, There.com, or Whyville.net include avatars, virtual real estate, and mobility, while others provide space for a variety of interactions and sharings such as MySpace.com or Facebook.com. There are, of course, online learning communities (OLC) such at those connected with universities, educational organizations, or commercial education providers, for example, The Washington Center, McREL, or WASDInet, that provide courses or other learning opportunities or discussions for sharing of information, some free and some for fees--most require registration prior to entry. Another challenge I encountered was to find communities of practice (CoP) that are free to join; some CoPs charge a monthly fee for participation;there are eligibility requirements for being approved as a member. Some CoPs are very particular who can be a part of their work groups--only accepting members with certain credentials in particular fields of discipline. I actually found a community that deals with educational topics that are pertinent to my field of study, TACommunities, in particular, I joined a community, the RTI Community of Practice, that deals with the topic of my Master paper. I have just received a confirmation email from the group and was surprised to learn that part of the discussions are via telephone conference call. I have been given a number to call and a code to enter for a conference call. The conference lecturer will be a person notable in the education fiield, focusing research on RTI, Ed Shapiro of Lehigh University.

I am anxious to get involved with the RTI CoP group, but also want to check out a couple other groups I have found and will report on my progress in those groups also. One of the other groups I have joined is Disaboom, a community for those touched by disability, and Alice a free 3D programming software and support community for schools and users.

The process of looking for communities has been eye-opening, and well worth the time spent. I have been involved in course and community listserves in the past, as well as checking out newsgroups and support forums for particular problem solving assistance, but I didn't realize there were work groups that were open for interested individuals, task force groups for particular policy or commercial studies. Well, time to get involved and will report back on my progress.