*Shrugs*

 I still generally hate blogs....

RSA

http://www.deakin.edu.au/dro/eserv/DU:30017596/stacey-sustaininganonline-2008.pdf

We talked about the capacity of the individual being the dividing line between being effective and failing attempts to create a learning community online, or at all. Focusing on the online or technology-based communities, there is a severe hurdle for students trying to accomplish this. There must be in the home an environment to facilitate this and if not the school. While we cannot control the home environment with the effect desired, we can control the curriculum that feeds the students’ ability to function at advancing levels. And Kniep asserts we should hold the administration culpable for this gap, that “a schoolwide focus on learning, inquiry, and reflective practice and a climate that promotes courage and initiative…. Schools that have low readiness for professional learning communities can also be characterized as having low leadership capacity” (57). Courage and initiative is a product of rigorous training that they should have before engaging in the online community—keyboarding is still our first class for freshman (mandatory)… keyboarding.
The article references the efforts of the Toronto Ministry of Education’s attempt to make this part of pedagogical dogma in the province. “In 1993, the Ministry of Education of Ontario and the Ontario Teachers'Federation provided funding for the creation of The Education Network of Ontario/Le Réseau éducatif de l'Ontario (ENO/REO) with two overriding objectives: a) to ensure that all teachers in Ontario had free access to the Internet as well as to each other, and b) to encourage the development of skills in the area of information and communication technology with the ultimate goal of using those skills in the classroom” (4).

The conclusion of the decade long study are awfully fscilinating:

Designers will have to balance the needs of the
community and the needs of individual members. The success of future
online communities will be heavily dependent on:
• the level of information overload,
• the tone of the environment (including all of the communitybuilding
practices needed for a healthy community), and
• outreach and marketing.

Perhaps that is the goal of the coursework in which I am currently enrolled.

Martin-Kniep (2006). Communities that Learn, Lead, and Last . , , 77-110. Retrieved from http://www.mcrel.org/PDF/LeadershipOrganizationDevelopment/5031TG_proflrncommfolio.pdf
Riverin S. & Stacey, E. 2008, Sustaining an Online Community of Practice. Journal of Distance Education. 22(2). 43

RSA 1

http://www.stanford.edu/~roypea/RoyPDF%20folder/A169_Lewis-Pea-Rosen_SSI_2010.pdf

This module asked us to explore our understanding of learning communities and their size and scope. According to Martin-Kniep, “In a professional learning community, teachers and administrators (1) share a vision focused on student learning, (2) share leadership and decision making, and (3) work and learn together as they continually examine instructional practices — all of which are supported by strong personal and professional relationships, time for collaboration, and good communication” (2006). Gathering ideas and comments made while reading the class’ discussion posts, it is evident that most learning communities are still fairly face-to-face in origin. Even in a web-based learning format, Concordia University is still reluctant to go fully online because there are perhaps still too many stigmas around the idea of an all-online learning environment, partly due to the lax requirements of man yearly online colleges. These “get-learned quick” schemes of the 90s and early 2000s spawned quite a backlash in the learning community, but as we move forward into the next generation of communications, we must learn to adapt our style of learning and incorporate all that is available if we are to keep up with a changing world.

In the aforementioned article, the authors go into some depth, exploring the role that technology will play in this advancement. The need to bridge the gap between academics tools and social tools grows because the rest of the world has done so. Stated by the authors, “That tools have influenced social consciousness should be surprising neither to social scientists nor to those who design, build or fund the technological worlds in which humans find themselves” (2010). The next generation of scientists and leaders are using every possible, usable piece of technology to reach out and create what one might call a “global intimacy.” Oxymoronic I know, but it is true. We can create manufactured intimacy and that can open doors for business and commerce even further than we thought possible. Not tapping into this resource is a critical mistake for American education to make because we not only resist change, making ourselves less relevant for contemporary uses, but we will cripple a generation of students that will fall further behind their ever growing global opponents in finance, science and technology and all the other pillars on which we built the American empire. China and the nations of the Middle East are quietly growing and growing and growing, and we must assess and how ready are we to compete with them in future markets.

To keep from going well over my space, we need to recognize that if the rest of society is looking at how to use everything from YouTube to Twitter to Facebook to communicate and reach out and create cyber communities, maybe education needs to follow suit because currently, it is losing the battle.

Sarah Lewis, Roy Pea & Joseph Rosen (2010). Beyond participation to co-creation of meaning: mobile social media in generative learning communities. Social Science Information, Vol. 49(3), 1–19. doi 10.1177/0539018410370726

Martin-Kniep (2006). Communities that Learn, Lead, and Last . , , 77-110. Retrieved from http://www.mcrel.org/PDF/LeadershipOrganizationDevelopment/5031TG_proflrncommfolio.pdf

My First Post

Hi, I am Mr. McKinnon's first post. In time, I will grow to astounding heights and expansive widths to encompass the entirity of all there is to know about, well, stuff.