November 24, 2004 - Time and Agendas
I’m beginning to look forward to the implementation of some solutions that will assist me cultivate a community of practice in my workplace. My greatest concern is the time issue. CoPs are like living organisms that are extremely fluid and difficult to manage. The challenge that I will face is trying to cultivate one within extremely narrow time constraints. As mentioned in previous posts, I only have f2f access to the staff on Friday afternoons. One Friday each month is set aside for staff meetings. Let’s face it, Friday afternoon is probably not the best time to meet f2f with staff members—energies are low, work may have piled up, etc. I must find ways to make the f2f experiences valuable to the staff. I will wait until after Christmas to begin the first f2f meetings, as I feel people are focused elsewhere during this time. I think that Tapped In will be a valuable tool for the staff to learn and will begin with teaching them those skills along with providing food for thought in the way of video clips and audio clips from Edutopia. Besides the time issue, my next greatest challenge is the logistics of how this staff teaches. To be honest, I’m not sure that technology really plays a role in the actual teaching that these teachers do. But, that’s for another blog…..stay tuned.