My understanding of what a community of practice is

It is my understanding that a community of practice is basically a group of people who share a common interest, and these people communicate and collaborate with one another (and other people) to build something related to that common interest. This concept plays a big role in many different communities, from park communities to communities in large corporations.

For example, in a community built around an open source project, the community of practice is the group of maintainers, contributors, and even anyone discussing the project. These people not only communicate and collaborate with one another on the project, but they also create a lively environment for everyone involved in the project, old and new. Ideally, this environment is open-minded, friendly, and energetic.

In essence, this “living” environment is even more important than the project itself - it is what moves the project forward. It allows the project to evolve by generating interest in the project from the open source and other communities (and thus bringing in more people to the project) and allowing for easy exchange of any and all ideas (which leads to the project’s growth).

Wikipedia page that I think I might be able to edit

I rummaged around in Wikipedia, and found a page that I think I might be able to edit: Illenium. Illenium is an electronic music producer, whose music I enjoy and listen to frequently. I also know a lot about him from reading and watching interviews, so I can ensure that the information on the Wikipedia page is correct (I already found some incorrect and missing information). All that I need to do now is go over Wikipedia’s rules and methods for editing pages, and then I can hopefully make a contribution to the Illenium page.

My progress with freeCodeCamp

I have carefully looked through the following links to make sure that I understand the freeCodeCamp guidelines on contributing challenges or articles:

• Research and write guide articles
• Update guide articles
• Create, update, and fix bugs in coding challenges

I also found several stub articles (articles that have yet to be written, see here) on some important JavaScript String methods, and I am planning on writing them and creating a pull request to freeCodeCamp by the end of this week.

Summary of course-related activity

Friday, March 22

We briefly discussed communities of practice and their importance, gave brief project updates, and then worked collectively as a class to solve an issue in astropy.

Tuesday, March 26

Each team worked on their projects today, and everyone gave a brief update on what they were doing.

Contributions

None this week.