Week 3 - Blog Posting #6 -Communities of Practice

As some of my classmates know, I am currently looking to move from traditional teaching to the corporate training/instructional design field. In the past I may have had trouble connecting to people who could help me with this goal. However, Web 2.0 services have made my transition easier because of my connections to larger numbers of communities.

I've been quite vocal about my search for a new job (one of the first steps for networking) and, as such, my current community has reached out with advice. Direct connections, in particular classmates through Full Sail, have given me both encouragement as well as specific advice. What has been interesting, though, is receiving information from secondary contacts. I have had some of my primary connections speak with people in their network with insight into my situation, and then relayed the response back to me through email, Facebook, and LiveJournal. This media has allowed me to extend my inquiries past the people I directly know and access information one or more degrees away from my personal social group.

In addition, the business networking site Linked In has proven helpful in unexpected ways. Linked In functions relatively like Facebook, except it has a focus on business rather than social networking. I initially created an account on the site for reasons outlined in this Guy Kawasaki article on the site: namely to network and make my qualifications known to potential employers.

After a bit of time on Linked In, I discovered another similarity the site has to Facebook, namely that it has groups that one can participate in. I quickly joined a group for corporate trainers and have since recieved a wealth of information on the career I have been looking to pursue. I currently recieve daily emails with the most recent postings within the group. In these postings I can read about key issues in the industry, pick up industry lingo, and even see worldwide job postings from others in the group.

As well, I can also respond to postings and participate in group dialogues. Recently I was happy to be able to point a group member looking for informtion on Adobe Captivate towards the excellent training materials at Lynda.com. She found out about training she might not have otherwise found, and I got to interact with another professional in my chosen industry.

This is just a small sampling of how online communities can help a job search or exploration. Larger numbers of job seekers are now looking to the internet to help their search, and companies have sprung up to respond to this trend. As sites like Linked In expand, they'll likely add additional resources for career progress. As well, thanks to the high degree of innovation and progress of Web 2.0, it can only be expected that additional sites will enevitably step in with services that create even more unexpected ways to use communities to find and explore careers.