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.

<p><font size="2" face="Arial">The perspective of communities of practice affects educational practices along three dimensions:</font></p> <ul> <font size="2" face="Arial"> <i> </i><li><i>Internally</i>: How to organize educational experiences that ground school learning in practice through participation in communities around subject matters?</li> <i> </i><li><i>Externally</i>: How to connect the experience of students to actual practice through peripheral forms of participation in broader communities beyond the walls of the school?</li> <i> </i><li><i>Over the lifetime of students</i>: How to serve the lifelong learning needs of students by organizing communities of practice focused on topics of continuing interest to students beyond the initial schooling period?</li> </font></ul> <p><font size="2" face="Arial">From this perspective, the school is not the privileged locus of learning. It is not a self-contained, closed world in which students acquire knowledge to be applied outside, but a part of a broader learning system.</font></p>

Anyone who can access the Internet can be part of the knowledge-access, knowledge-building, information-exchanging culture, regardless of location.

Learning communities do not have to be built through face-to-face interactions. They can be realized using nontraditional electronic communication.

Research suggests that in order for busy teachers to use an asynchronous learning environment they must feel part of a shared vision, have a sense of ownership of some part of the site, and benefit from the shared perspectives of others (Robertson, 2007).&nbsp; Providing the kind of scaffolding that has these features is challenging.&nbsp; Teachers are not typically given the time or the venue to share, discuss, or see examples of pedagogical alternatives for their classroom on any kind of regular basis (Darling-Hammond, 1997).

<p>Although our sample size is rather small, the findings of this study suggest that most participants (community college faculty members, mentor, and intern teachers) recognized the value of blogging as a platform for sharing resources and ideas and reflecting on personal experiences. Several teachers were planning to use blogging with their own students. </p> <p>Blogging seemed to at least indirectly benefit most&nbsp; PLC-MAP teachers in terms of integrating technology into their own teaching practices. </p>