1) Wenger & Prensky

To try and give a brief definition of what Wenger believes a 'community of practice' is, i will give you the definition that i stated in one of my blogs in February :

Wenger believes that a community of practice is about a 'joint enterprise' that is 'understood and continually renegotiated by its members'. (http://hannahbellv.blogspot.com/2009/02/communities-of-practice.html)

In addition, Prensky's concept of education in relation to 'digital natives' and 'digital immigrants' is whether or not 'digital immigrants' should continue to educate the new 'digital natives' the same way as they were educated, or whether they would be successful in teaching the 'digital natives' through their 'language'.

However, how do the two relate together? From previous blogs, i found a website that helps students in higher education on the inet by providing online cop's. (Check the blog out http://hannahbellv.blogspot.com/2009/03/open-educational-resources-in-africa.html) And this online cop did seem very successful.

Although, if educators (also known in Prensky's terms as a 'digital immigrant') were to teach students through their 'language', and say for example there was such thing as an online cop for each class and subject to discuss their thoughts and ideas, i think that this would be a great idea. Students would be able to share their ideas and at the same time they would be interacting with each other, with the same goal in mind - to learn about that certain subject.

However, one could argue that many issues could arise from this. Firstly, would this online cop be useful if the 'digital immigrant' itself could not use and therefore not interact with their students? What if none of the students could successfully educate each other about a certain topic? Would an online cop be then successful?

In addition, like Kenyon states on mchome, what about plagiarism? Taking others ideas, how would you monitor such a cop if the 'digital immigrant' could not interact and see who has put what? Additionally, if the 'digital immigrant' could not use the online cop and therefore allow the 'digital natives' to 'roam' around freely, and use the online cop for alternative forms of communication would it then be as successful?

Prensky does not know which one would be harder 'learning new stuff' or 'learning new ways to do old stuff.' However, he did state that he thinks the latter would be more successful. To me, i think that an online cop would be a great way in which to 'do old stuff'', although i think that 'digital immigrants' would have to be taught how to monitor and handle such 'new ways'. There is a future for education, and i do believe online cop's would be able to help educate students of all age but i do believe it would only be successful with rules and regulations and until such 'digital immigrants' are educated in the correct areas, one could argue that they would not be as successful.