Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

19 – Building Communities of Practice
Splicing the information cable
Bridging the Gap Between Technology and Sociology
Just as raft guide trainees are faced with both social and
technical challenges that must be addressed before
guiding difficult whitewater rapids, so too must members
of digital communities overcome social and technical
barriers when contributing to online practices. Given
these challenges, proper sequencing of content becomes
an important component of facilitating community interactions.
The following section addresses issues associated
with the sequencing and facilitation of community
interactions, the publication of community information,and
the development of technological infrastructure
that supports these ongoing processes.
DEVELOPING TECHNOLOGY
With the Palm, PocketPC, and Blackberry handheld
computers struggling for market share against both
notebook computers and cell phones enhanced with text
messaging and digital photography, the push to provide
consumers with better information management tools
and applications is not surprising. Manufacturers are
competing fiercely to guide, or perhaps monopolize and
control, the adoption of technology created by exponential
growth rates in processing and data transmission
capabilities over the past four decades (Technotopian
Delusions, 2005[54]).
Although these applications are often designed
around the commercial interests of private firms, technological
standards are working to integrate these disparate
information sources. The eXtensible markup
language (XML) is one such standard, playing an increasingly
important role in this ability to exchange and
integrate application data. Through the development of
industry-specific document type definitions (DTDs),
system developers can clearly define how information is
extracted from structured XML documents and used in
new software applications.
As the complexity of information systems increase,
system architects and information technology professionals
have begun to develop sophisticated tools for
modelling and communicating these intricate system
designs (termed unified modelling language [UML]
notation). Although practical examples of UML notation
will be given in the following section, it is important
to note that development of this notation closely follows
the growth of object oriented programming practices
that encourage code reuse through clearly defined and
independent program modules.
The technical advancements that allow for the distribution
of information over the past decade—accomplished
through standardized referencing and recording
practices—are often highly structured and inflexible.
These information systems have largely modelled organizational
structures found within small companies
that benefit from centralized control, usually associated
with niche expertise. As a result of these referencing and
recording practices, many organizations suffer from
hierarchal communication channels and myopic management,
and are usually not able to respond to rapid
changes in business conditions (Bieberstein et al., 2005,
p. 696). For this reason IBM researchers have adopted a
new form of organizational structure termed the “On
Demand Workplace”. 57 This new organizational structure
provides the framework for redefining our increasingly
“organic organizations” 58 and strive to optimize the efficient
exchange of information.
One method for efficiently exchanging information is
by transporting data files using the hypertext transfer
protocol (HTTP)—reliable message patterns (RMP).
RMP is ideal in a networked environment. RMP provides
transport of serialized content where distributed
services can use XML-specific mid-tier processing.
Service oriented architecture
Frank Cohen suggests that service oriented architecture
(SOA) is ideally suited to the loosely structured and
decentralized communities emerging on the Web (Fast-
SOA, p. 5). One tool available to the implementation of
the service oriented architecture (SOA) implementation
is the XML data model. Effective sharing between
groups can be accomplished through policy enforcement
regimes that use XML schema repositories (XSRs).
Through XML referencing and recording of data, and
57
The ‘On-demand Workplace’ is based upon the concept
of a service oriented architecture (SOA). This “new organizational
structure that optimizes the workforce and
streamlines cross-unit processes to leverage the new IT
systems” (Bieberstein et al., 2005[4], p. 696) is designed
around the perception of core tasks and activities as ‘units
of service’. These units of service can be defined as differentiated,
flexible, and team-based services that can be orchestrated
(Bieberstein et al., 2005[4], p. 696).
58
Bieberstein et al. state that; “IT systems have evolved from
mere tools and accelerators to an organic organizational
entity. This new entity needs to be factored into the proposed
structural design” (2005, p. 697) that has been created
to orchestrate a chain of services from various teams in
order to execute higher level tasks and business objectives
(Beiberstein et al., 2005[4], p. 697).
296 Education for a Digital World