Knowledge Is Something We Do: Knowing and Learning in Globally Networked Communities.

Workspaces are sites of contention over what is knowledge and who can say so; work-related education has never been a neutral arbiter. In a context in which workspaces routinely bring together physical place and cyber place in communication networks, traditional struggles over knowledge and knowing are affected by communications technologies (CT) in powerful but unobtrusive ways. CT play a part in construction of knowledge, community, and identity between and within workspaces. Formal, informal, and nonformal education mediates CT and helps shape local and global economic activities, working communities, and working lives. Communications networks operate to construct contemporary hybrid workspaces, but are also adopted by local working communities. Knowledge at work in hybrid workspaces has a social and textual character. Technology plays a part in shaping communication and knowledge production in workspaces. Organizations try to join up geographically and temporally dispersed workspaces by introducing software that mimics a physically integrated workspace. Two perspectives for education are the following: (1) educators may adopt the position that trainees, children, or colleagues should be informed of ways in which technology mediated knowledge construction and technologically facilitated collaborative environments can work to their advantage in contrast to the view that the role of education is to provide skills that will make future workers flexible and adaptable to the needs of the organization, and (2) educators can use those aspects of group communication and knowledge construction that benefit learning. (Contains 20 references) (YLB)