My Community of Practice

Following Mike’s lecture/discussion on ‘communities of practice’ I signed up to email alerts and Facebook pages in the area I am doing my MA in – US foreign policy and Iran. ‘Enduring America’ is a blog by W. Scott Lucas, a professor of American history particularly foreign policy in Birmingham, England. The blog is mainly concerned with current political events in Iran. As the ‘western’ press has little access to information from Iran due to the current regime’s repressive nature this blog is an invaluable source of news on internal Iranian affairs. I was told about this blog by my dissertation supervisor, Dr. David Ryan, and initially I was taking a glance at it whenever I remembered.  I then signed up for email alerts and now updates are sent to my email address each day.  I also get email updates from the ‘International Crisis Group’. This organisation was founded in 1995 and seeks to provide independent, non-partisan advice and information to governments and international bodies in the form of detailed well-researched reports on crisis situations around the world. On Facebook I joined the ‘National Security Archives’ (NSA) page. The NSA is an independent research institute located at the George Washington University in the US. Its mission is to ‘broaden access to the historical record’ by sourcing and gathering information often by pursuing Freedom of Information lawsuits. The NSA sends me updates on any new information released to my Facebook page so I can easily assess whether it is relevant to my studies.

These alerts and updates have made it easier for me to keep up in research areas I am interested in and they come to me rather than I having to remember to regularly seek them out. In his lecture Mike spoke of how people learn through communities of practice akin to apprenticeships. Initially the learner stays on the periphery observing and assimilating skills and information before gradually moving towards the centre. Etainne Wenger defines communities of practice as ‘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.’ However, I feel I am still only comfortable on the periphery and not yet confident to interact or add my voice to blogs or similar yet (other than this one!).

Historic restaurant tour of Cork

The following photos are of Cork city restaurants located in historic buildings. I did this photo tour as part of the digital history course and after much fiddling about managed to edit and upload the photos to the blog and to evernote.