reflective summary

I work in a Technology Center, that is, a school for technical based education that is related, in my case, to ten partner high schools. We provide secondary education and post secondary education in a rural area of south central Oklahoma. I see a lot of professional development, which in the past may have been done by attending seminars, be cut due to statewide budget reductions. In reading our texts I have envisioned a virtual professional development community that serves rural secondary schools, based in our technology center. In joining Tapped In, in response to the first assignment in this class, I enthusiastically envisioned how a community similar to this would benefit the schools my technology center serves. At first I thought it was possible to all join Tapped In and use rooms for the service I imagined. But I think the constraints of utilizing a structured existing community would hinder the outcome as opposed to using a tailor made community that would benefit the schools in rural Oklahoma. Hence I began dreaming of an ideal virtual learning community.
The virtual community would address issues that are important to rural Oklahoma schools. These topics might include:
Community sharing on how to improve instruction in the three main areas of English, Math, Science. The move to require Oklahoma high school students to pass End of Instruction (EOI) tests in these areas to graduate is ongoing. This initiative is also going to include mandatory remediation for students who do not meet the expected level of achievement. From this you might develop remediation programs that students could access.
Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) initiatives for the High Schools That Work (HSTW) ten key practices.
North Central Association, (NCA) school improvement processes.
Required in service activities such as safety, blood borne pathogens, multi-cultural sensitivity, bullying and material safety data sheets (MSDS). These requirements are annual or semi-annual for any school employee. To provide this information in a shared environment would be a service that schools could employ.
The target audience would be secondary instructors from our ten partner schools, although many topics could relate to middle or elementary instructors. In addition, specific in service topics may be of interest to health care facilities or other industry that is required to provide annual training on specific topics. Providing information that matters and utilizing collaborative learning are two indices that makes virtual learning communities effective (Renninger and Shumar, 2002).
To build a virtual learning community you must take into consideration four design details: support the actual practices and daily tasks of the participants; collect experiences and represent them in an accessible and equitable manner; provide a framework to guide the learning process; represent the identities of the community members (Renninger and Shumar, 2002). This relates to the questions in section (b) of this reflective summary. The virtual community I have proposed must meet the needs of the community participants. To do this a needs assessment should be performed. From this needs assessment goals can be developed which would define the purpose of the learning community. Although a needs assessment could prove to change the original goal, I see the purpose would be to improve professional development, assist our partner schools in meeting state mandated requirements and provide a collaborative environment to improve instruction overall. Leadership would be provided through the technology center with structure provided from the Oklahoma State Department of Education and partnering institutions such as SREB and NCA. Throughout our discussions, this class has cemented the idea that a virtual community must provide interesting, timely, accurate information actively led by someone with sound technological ability and the freedom to commit time to the community.
The readings and discussions this class has offered has helped me conceptualize this idea. Entering this class I could visualize classes, such as the ones I have taking with my masters program, existing on-line, but that was the extent of the concept of on line learning. Beginning with MediaMOO, moving through the study of social and professional development communities, use of virtual space opened up new possibilities. The contrast to the physical world, the lack of context in the virtual world enables imagination, identity and the kind of valuing that deepens interest and enables knowledge building (Renninger and Shumar, 2002). The readings defined success as in the discussion of communities of practice like Tapped In and discussed failures. Success and failure was very succinctly compared by discussion of the Huron Public School system in CSCL 2 by Koschmann, Hall and Miyake. In addition the classes’ summarization solidified the ideas that success is build upon interest, knowledge and time. I look forward to continuing this conversation and my efforts expanding the idea of virtual community for rural Oklahoma schools.