October 2004 — Features
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Enabling Distributed Learning Communities Via Emerging Technologies - Part Two
” While valuable, activities such as issuing reports, holding conferences and writing articles are inadequate to accomplish the scale of changes required in our society’s rethinking of learning, teaching and schooling. Especially if we believe that teaching should move toward educational models such as distributed learning communities, all of us should base our initiatives on similar processes so that the medium of change reinforces the methods. What nascent examples of distributed learning communities might guide these design efforts toward such an innovation strategy? For reasons of space, just two illustrations are sketched below.As an experiment in teacher learning communities across distance (without a face-to-face component), an Inquiry Learning Forum was created at Indiana University for math and science teachers across the state who were interested in guided inquiry teaching. This Web site (http://ilf.crlt.indiana.edu) contains many types of support for professional development via distance learning - from video case studies to virtual communities of practice.
Studies indicated that the Forum was effective in many ways, but a face-to-face component would have increased its value and impact (Barab et al. 2001). Research such as this can help in developing second-generation distributed learning communities to prepare the critical mass of skilled teachers essential to achieving major improvements in student learning outcomes, the organizational redesign of schools, and other innovations crucial to education for the 21st century.
As a second example, the Milwaukee Public Schools’ (MPS) Professional Support Portal (www.milwaukee.k12.wi.us/pages/MPS/Teachers_Staff/Tech_Tools/Portal ) is an emerging design for new teacher induction and retention based on a distributed learning communities model (Dede and Nelson, in press). Since more than 10% of the district’s teachers leave each year, and 37% of its new teachers leave within their first five years, unacceptable instructional conditions result. Students, often those with the greatest needs, are being taught by rookies year after year. Aided by researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and by the Education Development Center, the Professional Support Portal (PSP) is a district initiative to advance and accelerate the effectiveness of new teachers, as well as to reduce the attrition among new teachers. The development of the PSP is based on a distributed learning communities design process (http://gseacademic.harvard.edu/~mps).
New teachers’ needs center on access to high-quality teaching and informational resources, frequent interaction with expert mentors and coaches, and ongoing peer support. In response, the portal project has created a convergence of several learning tools:
