Pegs & Purfling

I had initially thought I would design a site that would bring together fiddle players and makers, and try to create a CoP environment for them, but I quickly realized that this was too broad a set of interests to tackle in the time I had available.

So I have opted to go with only one strand: Fiddle building. Fortunately we are not expected to program all the elements we would like to see. I've discovered that most of the sub-pages can actually be hosted very easily using a range of free Web 2.0 tools: a blog (Blogger), a gallery (Flickr or Picassa), video workshop (Youtube), suggested books (LibraryThing), useful links (Delicious), etc. Aside from creating the initial hub/home page, the rest of the content can take advantage of the wide variety of social networking services that already exist. (Ning provides this kind of "all in one" solution.)

More to follow.

Communities of Practice - Can it work on-line?

We've been looking at the notion of building communities of practice, and whether or not it is possible to create what is essentially a social network in an on-line environment.

As Etienne Wenger defines CoP:

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

Our assignment is to replicate the conditions using a Dreamweaver created site. I'll keep you posted.