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