Our recent posts have talked about ChinesePod as a tool. Today I want to emphasize the people (learners, experts, and practitioners). We’re all here to share knowledge, work towards common goals, and learn Mandarin collaboratively. We are, in that sense, a Community of Practice.
The concept of CoP was originally framed (20 years ago) in terms of small, off-line groups (networks) of learners. It was powerful then, and it’s powerful now. But think about this: put that notion together with a global platform, some web 2.0 tools, and a great community, and you could have something tremendously powerful, a CoP on steroids.
V3 connects us in new ways. It’s a seriously efficient network that forms the basis of a latter day CoP. Networks are definitely good for learning. (Some people say the network is the learning.) Consider that the the most effective learning tool we know of is a network - the neural network known as the brain. On V3, finding lessons, information, discussions, comments, answers, solutions, etc, will be RSS enabled, easier and faster than ever to manage.
So, the network is central to what we’re doing. But ChinesePod is more than just an efficient network. Ultimately, any CoP is about people. I believe our culture of openness and sharing on Chinesepod has created what Robert Putnam calls ’social capital’, a kind of community good will. This makes for some very positive consequences: a collaborative, non-threatening environment that fosters relationships and creates a sense of belonging (for example). It’s warm, fuzzy, and human. After 20 years in classrooms I know how important this is.
So think of what happens when the people on our network strive towards common goals in an atmosphere of motivation and collaboration. Information flows freely, shortening the learning curve for newcomers and helping them to understand the larger context of the challenge. It reduces the need to re-invent the wheel for their common problems. Meanwhile, the constant buzz of activity gives us all a reason to come back regularly. Whatever your level, if you visit and revisit this CoP, I think you will learn here. Sharing, developing, and managing knowledge is where it’s at and V3 is designed to maximize that.
So, the new toy we’re calling V3, is more than the sum of its properties. I see it as a way to disseminate good learning practices by relying on the tools, the network, and each other. To a certain extent we already do this but I want to get better at getting better. I hope that you, the Big Brain, do too.
We have the chance to do something really special here - building the biggest and greatest CoP around. I think this could have a real impact on how ‘e-learning’ is perceived. Are you with me on this?
Ken Carroll
中文 Chinese
Michael Butler Says:
March 23rd, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Well,
Being a part of the biggest, greatest community of practice does not ring my bell. Building the greatest is just too relative I think. Maybe you’d like to benchmark yourselves against the Jesuits who build-up an astounding community of practice over 100s of years. Can you think of another great community to benchmark Chinesepod against?
I personally cringe when I hear the claim of the biggest or the greatest because of all the ego that comes along with that. I’d be satisfied with an excellent community of practice, and I would define it as much by the successes at the outer edges as at the center.
chinesepod Says:
March 23rd, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Michael,
You’re right. It’s melodramatic!What was I thinking of? Call it what you will. These are just words, but I think you get my drift (and hopefully my enthusiasm). ‘Excellent’ would have been a better choice of words, but it’s Friday.
I’m not sure I defined it at the center - my whole point was to put it in terms of the community …
The Jesuits were an amazing CoP, but Hank Horkoff didn’t do the web tech.
Ken Carroll
chinesepod Says:
March 23rd, 2007 at 4:37 pm
I’m with you, Ken!
-John
海宁 / Henning Says:
March 23rd, 2007 at 6:39 pm
At least there is no Chinese-learning-related Community I know of that is better than CPod.
It serves four majors functions:
1) Motivation. You are not alone with your pursuring of that Sisyphus quest that Mandarin learning sometimes seems to be, and others managed to overcome the very same problems that you currently face.
2) Knowledge sharing. Where else can I throw in highly specific cultural or professional Chinese questions and hope to get a adequate answer? Just look at the “Translation Challenge”.
-3) Experience sharing. Hands-of usage reports of both native speakers and 老外 regarding language application and/or cultural context. The lesson discussions often mirror content with first-hand experience and thereby enrich it with an additional layer of meaning.
4) Ressource pool. Both self-designed ressourses and net ressources are shared here. Example: My bookmark collection was built up over many, many years. After entering CPod it grew 3-fold within a couple months.
Hank Horkoff is indeed a good web “plumber”, but just as important are Marchey, Bazza and AuntySue and the CPod associated Bloggers.
Bazza 白锐 Says:
March 23rd, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Ken, does the new forum banner meet with your approval?
Anne M. Says:
March 23rd, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Ken,
I completely agree, the community is one of the key elements, if not the main one, of ChinesePod. My kudos to you and the Big Brain for keeping this such a friendly place. Without the flame wars or power games that often seem to inevitably come up in other online communities!
I have one question: In a former blog comment you announced a shared platform for premium users. I couldn’t find it in the V3 preview. Will V3 have such a platform?
Michael Butler Says:
March 23rd, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Ken,
Ugh, friday is my grouchy day. But nevertheless, I loved your answer. And I second what Anne M. said.
DaXiong Says:
March 23rd, 2007 at 10:40 pm
I’ve been a premium subscriber for two months, a leecher for eight, and I don’t see myself running away anytime soon.
I have to agree with Anne M. The forums and blog comments do seem to be a lot friendlier than the average user group. Hierarchy doesn’t seem to rear it’s ugly head, and all are welcome.
I certainly look forward to using V.3. Hopefully sooner than later. I think I’m salivating.
Ron in DC Says:
March 24th, 2007 at 12:37 am
Ken-
Why apologize for believing that you’re ‘building the biggest and greatest CoP around’? Haven’t you been believing that all along or you wouldn’t have accomplished what you already have? And don’t your employees believe that as well?
Tim Says:
March 24th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Hey Ken
Awsome, I am in!
I have lived in Hong Kong for nearly two years, and the last few months I have dramatically improved my chinese just on listening to your free podcasts alone, then I signed up for the real meat and I wish i signed up earlier!!
I can ask any crazy question and I don’t know who will answer my question but it gets answered REALLY WELL and i can understand things so much more. This is with out a doubt, the coolest and easiest way for me to learn chinese!
Thanks everyone in the community for your help!
Tim (the Aussie)
Richard Sharpe Says:
March 24th, 2007 at 1:42 am
Arrrgh, I can’t stand it:
You are not alone with your pursuring of that Sisyphus quest that Mandarin learning sometimes seems to be
Persuing and Sisyphean
海宁 / Henning Says:
March 24th, 2007 at 2:25 am
Hi Richard,
my sincere apologies! I guess those are the hardships of a non-native speaker with unsatisfactory language abilities.
Transferred that “Sisyphus” directly from my native German idiom in the vague hope it could be used in the same way (”Sysiphus-Arbeit”).
But if you like to become really mad go ahead and read my Chinese posts. You would not find enough “rrrr”s for your Arrghs when trying to comment those.
Thanks for the corrections. I learn from them. For me CPod is always a place to practice my poor English also.
Richard Sharpe Says:
March 24th, 2007 at 3:30 am
Transferred that “Sisyphus” directly from my native German idiom in the vague hope it could be used in the same way (”Sysiphus-Arbeit”).
Sisyphus is correct, because it refers to the fate of Sisyphus. It is just that adjective construction in English is funny, although that may relate to the word being Greek, but even then I cannot immediately figure out if the rule is obvious, or just has to be remembered. Eg Hercules becomes Herculean, Procrustes become Procrustean.
Finally, while I am sure I have seen Sisyphean, perhaps what I read is wrong.
Ahhh, see [Origin: 1625–35;
I used Sisyphus adjective in Google to find that.
Richard Sharpe Says:
March 24th, 2007 at 3:31 am
And, of course, HTML screwed me up.
Once more with feeling:
See [Origin: 1625–35; < Gk Sīsýphe(ios) (Ssyph(os) Sisyphus -eios adj. suffix) -an]
AuntySue Says:
March 24th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could go back and remove the typos from our posts
Ken Carroll Says:
March 24th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Richard,
I appreciate your enthusiasm, but are you suggesting that ‘pursue’ should be spelled ‘persue’? I’m not sure the latter exists.
Ken Carroll
Ken Carroll Says:
March 24th, 2007 at 11:03 am
Aunty,
I guess it wouldn’t be a blog if we could remove the typos. In the same way, making conceptual blunders, changing your mind, or even making contradictory statements shouldn’t be changed. It’s been pointed ouit to me time and again where I may have had the wrong end of the stick. I guess I’m used to it now and it is definitely to be encouraged. Our rash decisions, mistakes, and faux pas will remain as testament to our learning.
Ken Carroll
Lantian Says:
March 24th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
BITS - I think that sometimes removing all the imperfections in life, is well, just not so perfect a situation. Blogs and emails are different from newspapers and memos.
If one wants polished copy, then head over to the NYTimes, there is a whole copy desk and style guide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03.....mp;ei=5070
There’s also a slightly tongue-in-cheek article on why a broken Microsoft OS, Vista is necessary and maybe even better; because it serves a larger audience and allows more individual customization than a ‘perfectly designed’ and controlled Apple OS. Brad pitches the idea of ‘broke’ is better here:
http://www.techreview.com/Infotech/18154/
It occurs to me that the word ‘practice’ and ‘community’ means something unpolished, learning, shifting and an amalgamation of different individual eccentrics.
This is different than an NBA All-Star team or a collegiate debating team where winning, being the best, and the ‘perfect game’ is the goal.
如果我能写没有问题的书写我真没有意思过来在这里聊聊。在一件邻居里只有很多各人各样的人，如果我经常批评别人的小错，那能有大家的自由？那有我自己的自由？
Wow, I may definitely give some readers a migraine reading what I just wrote in Chinese. It’s very abstract and tough to express with my current abilities, but yah know what…
Changye Says:
March 24th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
The atmosphere of ChinesePod is very friendly and welcoming. Learning Chinese through asking/answering questions, exchanging views with other people, and sometimes joking always gives me a great pleasure.
This brilliant podcast is just like a large “real” classroom, in which a lot of excellent teachers and earnest students from all over the world are communicating with each other around the clock. Keep going!
Thank you, everyone.
Chris (Mandarin_Student) Says:
March 25th, 2007 at 2:28 am
I agree with Lantian (I think :)).
Lantian: 你写着让我的头痛一点，是你的目的吗？ 或许我写着也是这么样的，不过就是我的中文写的还不太好。中国人觉得呢？我阅读也是不太好，就是这个原因吗？
I understood what was written but it seemed open to interpretation, is that just becasue I don’t read well? Just curious.
海宁 / Henning Says:
March 25th, 2007 at 3:09 am
Chris, Lantian,
笼统地来说我同意你们的意见, 但是对我来说改正英文和中文的错都是很有帮助的。我不是特别敏感的人。
I was on the verge of correcting a research paper I uploaded yesterday for a conference (I used “pursue” once in that), but Ken’s reply made me doublecheck.
The Google score is 83,900,000 to 799,000 in favour of “pursue”.
The best English-German dictionary I know of (dict.leo.org) also gave me “pursue” so I left the paper untouched (deadline is tomorrow).
Dict.leo.org is also an interesting example of leveraging communities of practice: Large parts of the contents are streaming in from the vast user base, and there are vivid discussions that feed and enrich the vocab base. Right now Leo has 454,148 high-quality entries. Leo also expanded its approach to German-Spanish and German-French. I just wished they would come up with German-Mandarin…
海宁 / Henning Says:
March 25th, 2007 at 3:25 am
Oh, how strange is that: Just a minute ago learned “community” in Chinese - thanks to Bazza who one posted the crazy advice to switch Firefox to Chinese.
Now all multinational websites think I am Chinese and present me Chinese frontends. So now that I want to join one of the biggest Community services here (”Xing” aka “OpenBC”) I am forced to once again fight my way through the Mandarin language.
All I want to do is “加入本社区” (jiārù běn shèqū - enter this community).
So community in the sense discussed in this thread is 社区.
敦禮 Says:
March 25th, 2007 at 5:21 am
I am very thankful for the Cpod community.
Like Tim the Aussie in Hong Kong, since starting Cpod my personal learning is clearly improving. An idea that I ponder on recently concerns methods of using what we learn. I am not fortunate enough to be able to live in a Mandarin environment, therefore all this learning is intake, very little verbal output on my part. This leads me to wanting a way to babble along with my Mandarin and have someone drill me until I get it right. One example that I think of is whenever a premium user uses written Chinese in a blog or discussion, they know that a Cpod teacher will review it and will communicate corrections if needed. This type of feedback takes -think skin on our faces- but I think it is well worth it.
An idea.
Rock on folks.
Richard Sharpe Says:
March 26th, 2007 at 3:35 am
Ken says:
I appreciate your enthusiasm, but are you suggesting that ‘pursue’ should be spelled ‘persue’? I’m not sure the latter exists.
Touche.
That is another word that I have been trying to get right
However, that is an object lesson in how to learn. I am unafraid to make mistakes, and believe me, I have made plenty during my life. The key is to find people who are willing to take the risk that they will offend you by correcting you, and then learning from your mistakes, large or small.
Richard Sharpe Says:
March 26th, 2007 at 3:37 am
Henning said:
I was on the verge of correcting a research paper I uploaded yesterday for a conference (I used “pursue” once in that), but Ken’s reply made me doublecheck.
I apologize for the confusion there …
Chris (Mandarin_Student) Says:
March 26th, 2007 at 7:32 am
One question,
Is there a point at which you will be more productive spending a lot of time communicating with Chinese people learning English rather than other Westerners learning Chinese.
I think there is, language learning is special in this respect as two people approaching from different ends can meet in the middle. It is hard to think of other areas of learning that may have this potential symbiotic potential (I am sure someone will come up with something though).
Increasingly that seems to be where most of my free time is heading.
Also, all this energy put into correcting English, discussing the merits of correction of English, backtracking from correction etc. etc. might actually have some merit in the above mentioned scenerio (whereas at the moment it is pretty irrelevant, you can be absolutely sure that I for one am not going to waste any sleep over the spelling of that word that begins with p… I dare not mention its name for fear of incurring wrath).
Ken Carroll Says:
March 26th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Chris,
It’s clearly good to go native and engage in discussions with native speakers if you can. With writing Chinese, that requires time and a fairly advanced knowledge of the language. That was the idea for us behind the advanced site. To me, however, this absolutely doesn’t mean that the advanced learner would not learn from other learners. Contact with both native speakers and other lerners is good.
Ken Carroll
Richard Sharpe Says:
March 26th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Chris asks:
Is there a point at which you will be more productive spending a lot of time communicating with Chinese people learning English rather than other Westerners learning Chinese.
From day one it is more productive to spend time with native speakers, and in many respects it is better if they cannot speak English. However, they typically want some sort of exchange.
I spent some time a few nights ago speaking in Cantonese with a native speaker (from Malaysia, but a speaker of Cantonese non-the-less) and it was a joy to be able to speak and understand and be understood.
I am seriously contemplating going to Hong Kong this (northern) summer or next to take one of the the intensive intermediate Cantonese courses at CUHK, perhaps along with a Mandarin course. I pretty much have both sets of tones under control and would really enjoy spending 12 weeks improving my Cantonese and Mandarin.
Richard Sharpe Says:
March 26th, 2007 at 11:53 am
chris says:
absolutely sure that I for one am not going to waste any sleep over the spelling of that word that begins with p… I dare not mention its name for fear of incurring wrath).
You can bet that I will not forget how to spell that word that begins with p ever again
Just like I will not forget how to write 没 because I got it wrong in a test recently.
goulnik (郭力毅) Says:
March 27th, 2007 at 4:23 am
talking of communities, I just looked up Chinesepod in wikipedia and was surprised to find the following :
This is all a bit out-of-date, and so is the logo, anyone planning to update the entry?
Yv