Twenty-first-century educational practice: research, evidence and knowledge management - Teaching with Technologies: The Essential Guide - page 189

Figure 10.3 national online communities of practice for professional networking and knowledge

management in the uK for education.

This provides a powerful knowledge base for educational practitioners and the oppor-
tunity for low-cost collaboration. This is a clone of a successful Web 2.0 environment
for local government in the UK (IDeA 2008) (Figure 10.3).
It is our contention that there is a role for a national e-infrastructure in each
country to support knowledge building and knowledge sharing across a vast range of
areas in order to gain maximum benefit nationally and internationally from the intel-
lectual capital held in a particular discipline area. However, such a resource requires
coordination and a commitment to ongoing funding.

Knowledge management and examples from other sectors

Knowledge management is an emerging discipline (Henley 2008a,b; IDeA 2006, 2008,
2009) and in the UK a Knowledge Management Council for central government to
complement the Information Management Council has been established. Staff in
organizations with effective knowledge-management strategies can be expected to
demonstrate five characteristics in that they find and use research-based knowledge,
create and share knowledge as well as manage knowledge to ensure their work is
based on the latest knowledge of effective practice.
Figure 10.4 sets out these characteristics and provides examples of the tools nec-
essary in a research environment to ensure effective knowledge management. These
tools include:

· the linking of research databases so they are cross-searchable (see for exam-
ple www.eep.ac.uk)
· an expectation that practitioners and policy-makers will use research (as
demonstrated through appraisal procedures)