Week 9 Question 1 How might Wenger's notions on practice communities relate to Prensky's on education?

Wenger talks about the community of practice and how in a COP there is people that are better than you at something and have more experience because they enjoy that particular thing and develop an interest in it that makes them want to practice at it in order to get better and be able to help teach other people. This doessn't necessarily mean that within the community of practice they hold any any sort of authority over anybody else. People are all learning together just at different levels. This relates to Prensky's idea of the digital immigrants/natives as they are part of a community in the digital world and are both learning about new media. However just like the community of practice that Wenger talks about there is some people that are better and have more knowlege (digital natives) and people who arn't at as eductaed and don't have as much experience like (digital imigrants). Like the community of practice just because digital natives have more knowledge it doesn't mean they have any authority or hold more power over digital imigrants. Digital natives are there to help and guide digital imigrants with things they don't know. Both are still learnig all the time as the digital world is becoming more advanced all the time and technology is changing so people are always having to keep up with the changes even if some people are learning at a higher level than others like in a COP.

Both Wegners model of COP and Prensky's on eductation reflect that in a way both COP and in eduction there will be different things that will suit certain individual rather than others. Some people that enjoy been part of one COP might not enjoy been part of a COP that their best friend for example likes to be part of. Like with Prensky and eduction certain people would prefer to learn through new technology for example using computers to type up their work and also research information through different internet sites wheras on the other hand some individuals would prefer say handwriting their work or getting their research from books in the libraray rather than sitting for hours on end at a computer.

We can clearly see from both these theorists that you will always come across people in life that will be better at something than you and enjoy a particular topic more than you. However this should be seen as a good thing as we can learn from one another.