few local resources can become members of online communities. OCoPs allow for the enculturation of newcomers to a practitioners' community. In this way, both experienced and novice practitioners learn together and help shape the personal identities of the members and the collective identities of the greater practice. Virtual Communities of Practice have been suggested to be especially effective for increasing teacher efficacy and reducing professional isolation in computer science education. Some questions remain as to what level of participation in an online community constitutes legitimate membership of an OCoP. Two types of participation have been identified to distinguish between levels of activity. Active participation means that members regularly contribute to community discourse. Peripheral participation, also called “lurking,” means that members read without contributing themselves. While it is preferable to have more active participation, some recent studies have concluded that peripheral participation is normal in online communities. Though these members may not contribute to the community discourse, they nevertheless learn from observing, and as such are legitimate participants. Despite this, some academicians assert that peripheral participation can threaten an OCoP if more members lurk than actively participate. Social networking Web 2.0 applications and social networks have increased the ease with which OCoPs are created and maintained. The structural characteristics of a community of practice include a shared domain of interest, a notion of community, and members who are also practitioners. Only with all three characteristics present does a group become a community. A single Internet application, though it may incorporate one of these characteristics, may not be enough to fully support a full community in practice. The continued development of Web 2.0 technologies and the ensuing evolution of vast social networks have easily enabled incorporating these characteristics within an OCoP. Social networks allow for the creation of clearly defined domains of interest in which dialogue and interactive conversations create communities with common and recorded histories. Social network tools allow members of OCoPs to create and share knowledge and develop cultural historical processes. Advantages An online community of practice enables participants to read, submit and receive advice and feedback from the community to the extent that they wish. Those who choose to participate in a strictly receptive manner (i.e. only reading) can still gain knowledge and skills from the communal resources, which is especially valuable to beginning practitioners. OCoPs give beginners, who might not feel comfortable sharing their knowledge, an opportunity to