Group items tagged

The term professional learning community has become quite commonplace in education circles. The term describes a collegial group who are united in their commitment to an outcome. In the case of education, the commitment would be to student learning. The community engages in a variety of activities including sharing a vision, working and learning collaboratively, visiting and observing other classrooms, and participating in shared decision making. The benefits of professional learning community to educators and students include reduced isolation of teachers, better informed and committed teachers, and academic gains for students. Shirley Hord of the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory says, that as an organizational arrangement, the professional learning community is seen as a powerful staff-development approach and a potent strategy for school change and improvement.

Professional Learning Communities at Work Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement Professional Learning Communities at Work Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement by Richard DuFour & Robert Eaker

The Effective Professional Learning Communities project is a study of effective professional learning communities in schools and of how they are created and sustained. It is an exciting, new, collaborative venture between the Universities of Bristol and Bath and the Institute of Education, University of London, which is funded by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), General Teaching Council for England (GTC) and the National College for School Leadership (NCSL)

Critical Mass: How Digital Technology Will Define the Way You Live Digital communities are where you live-that's "you" as in Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2006, which recognizes and celebrates "the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter." This Digital Communities Special Report discusses how the 120 million Americans who are active online users and creators of content and services are changing the world by redefining it around their preferences and predilections, and by the technologies they use and the way they use them. Also see http://www.accela.com/products/whitepapers.asp

The Pew Internet & American Life Project will create and fund original, academic-quality research that explores the impact of the Internet on children, families, communities, the work place, schools, health care and civic/political life. The Project aims to be an authoritative source for timely information on the Internet's growth and societal impact, through research that is scrupulously impartial.

"I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself," McCain told the New York Times in an interview that appeared Sunday.  "I don't expect to be a great communicator, I don't expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need." Even so, McCain bluntly admits, "I don't e-mail. I've never felt the particular need to e-mail."

Seretta picked FirstClass to serve as the school's unified messaging and collaboration solution. Accustomed to paper and more traditional means of communication, many staff members and faculty were reluctant to embrace the new system. Seretta didn't give in. "We went from zero to 90 percent adoption within three months, so there was no time for hand wringing or debate," said Seretta. "We simply said no more paper, unless it involved internal documents that require signatures."

Federal regulators are planning to meet on Friday and declare that Comcast violated Net neutrality principles when throttling BitTorrent traffic on its network. This would become the U.S. government's first Net neutrality-related ruling. There's just one problem with the Federal Communications Commission's plans: They may not be quite, well, legal. In other words, the FCC may not actually have the authority to make its ruling stick.

Is it educational technology? Only insomuch as most of us couldn't do what we do without a lot of caffeination. However, it is education, since business education has become largely inseparable from technology. That being said, his thoughts are quite timely as more and more businesses look to employ some degree of "compassionate capitalism," whether that means spending extra on facilities and building green, giving back to their communities or employees, or otherwise spending money in thoughtful ways that don't simply line the pockets of investors and executives. So here's a little departure from ed tech and some thoughts from Dean Cycon on the impending closing of Starbucks' retail outlets.

From davegray | dot info: Dave Gray is the Founder and Chairman of XPLANE, the visual thinking company. Founded in 1993, XPLANE has grown to be the world's leading consulting and design firm focused on information-driven communications. Dave's time is spent researching and writing on visual business, as well as speaking, coaching and delivering workshops to corporate clients.

Ning community for visitors to www.ictineducation.org and the newsletter, Computers in Classrooms

Will the transhuman technologies that our accelerating future promises enable us to increase our empathy to others? Or will their use decrease our ability to understand 'the other' that exists outside our own selves, families, communities and cultures? As the world grows smaller and more connected, humans will grow ever more divergent because of their possession - or not - of a multitude of transhuman technologies, and so the role of empathy grows larger and more important than ever. In theory, sensory/media input stimulates mirror neurons, which enable empathy.Practically, empathy is created through storytelling, which is not only the most successful remote means of creating social empathy, but has actually been the engine of social/cultural liberalization and change. I will demonstrate both the positive and negative affects on empathy through the increasing reliance we have on transhuman media technologies and how I believe storytelling is the key to empathy creation.

Os dejo hoy un resumen de la Primera Unidad del Curso de Facilitación de Comunidades Online en el que participo, considerando que puede ser de utilidad a diversas disciplinas, desde la educación al márketing social. El curso se desarrolla en inglés (paso a traducir este mismo artículo) pero he creído que a algunos lectores podrían seros de interés algunas de sus conclusiones. Lo iré haciendo al finalizar cada unidad. Se trata de un ejercicio de síntesis y aportación personal. Podéis ver las fuentes teóricas de las que parto, las que matizo según mi experiencia, al final del artículo

Mike Arrington, the TechCrunch uber-blogger, spoke for many when he wrote recently: "Voicemail is dead. Please tell everyone so they'll stop using it."

Take a look at what folks are doing with online video. I was blown away by the idea and excited for those that clearly are enjoying a medium that is a perfect communication tool for them.