Online+Communities

**Online Professional Communities**
**Additional Resources [|Iowa Online Community Ning] Features of the Iowa Online Community Ning Research/Best Practices What are they?** Online professional communities, or online social groups, are meeting places where professionals can network with other professionals as well as share ideas, resources and questions. They are not driven by course outcomes or credit like online courses (see Learning Forums). They take on the purpose of creating new knowledge from shared experience and ideas. And, they have the ability to dove-tail with DuFour's work on [|Professional Learning Communities].

Think of them as listservs 2.0. While they are a service that people can join and feature an ongoing discussion, they offer more than listservs, including visual elements and multimedia, as well as RSS. They also allow people to pick and choose the conversations, whereas listservs come in a steady flow of emails.

**How they benefit professional development** • They individualize PD, putting the educator in an active role in their professional development (as opposed to being top-down, determined by someone else) • They individualize PD around grade level or subject area (consider the Family Consumer Science teacher in a rural district, a department of one, and the focus of the professional development in her building not being specific to her subject area) • They enhance connections to other districts (again, think of the Family Consumer Science teacher networking with other FCS teachers). • Through networking, they increase the likelihood that key pieces of information get to you • They allow discussion at a more specific level (feedback can be give on a specific lesson plan or student artifact with a colleague) • They model 21st century teaching and learning skills • They enhance the opportunities for growth to be ongoing, not locked into a 3-hr. window once a month. • The growth doesn't just develop the professional, it also develops the group

**Some examples** [|Classroom 2.0] [|ODIE (ESU 10 - Nebraska)] [|The Bridge (University of Georgia)] [|Tapped In] [|Virtual Spanish Teachers] - AEA13 - Ning site [|ISTE Ning] [|Second Life for Educators] [|Iowa Science Teachers K-16 Ning]

**Our question** Can we as AEAs partner together to bring this form of online learning to our educators?

**Key considerations** Initial costs could be funded by stimulus money, in a direct correlation to improving student achievement. Most costs would be the one-time start up costs of development and initial hardware. Partnerships with post-secondary institutions should be sought as well. Is there a neutral located site that we could house the servers for these communities, as well as the URL? All research points to the success of communities being directly related to the quality of the facilitator. Some existing statewide teacher organizations would be excellent places to start. Other statewide committees' leadership would be logical facilitators. Additionally, leaders in the field at the post-secondary level should be sought to facilitate communities. Supporting facilitators with current research and best practices in building online communities is critical. Communities need to both lead into and follow-up other opportunities, like workshops or professional development courses. There should be avenues for the data/conversations generated in online communities to be used, and those avenues should be transparent. A quality evaluation system needs to be developed for the communities to improve. We will be flexible. Communities could be structured around content areas (e.g. Family Consumer Science Teachers), grade levels (e.g. Pre-K teachers), instructional areas (e.g. technology integration), statewide initiatives (e.g. IDM, PBS), other consortia (e.g. MISIC). The purpose is not to advocate one type over another, but rather to provide as much networking opportunity as possible. Communities will be started as state-wide to ensure reaching the critical mass to sustain the group. However, smaller communities (say, an AEA-wide community) can be formed as well. To form a community, there needs to be 1) a committed facilitator, and 2) a purpose geared towards student achievement/development (a community built around fantasy-football playing teachers is obviously not an acceptable community).
 * • //How will the programming/development be funded?//**
 * • //Where will the communities be housed?//**
 * • //Who will facilitate the communities?//**
 * //• How will we retain member involvement? (A typical community features many "joiners", but dies out when participation is not sustained)//**
 * //• How will we structure communities?//**

**Key items to include** • Offered statewide to increase numbers, networking • Flexibility to define communities • Directed facilitating/moderating to ensure activity • Tie into existing learning communities • Each community would have a purpose or reason for being • Participants join the community • A home page for each community member • The ability to showcase teacher's work (including slideshows and videos) • Ongoing forums for discussion (which can be archived and searched) • A calendar of events for each member • A host of workshops available to register for (through Adobe Connect Pro?) • RSS and cloud tag capabilities, including "Amazon-like" suggestions.

**Projected Timeline** 1. May 2009 -- Finalize proposal (including budgeted costs). Take to Chief Administrators for funding approval. Bid the proposal out. Share proposal with other stakeholders, including joint directors, Iowa Core/DE committees, and post-secondary institutions. 2. June 2009 -- Start development work, including purchasing of necessary hardware. 3. August 2009 -- Start recruiting of facilitators for the committees. This can include from statewide committees and associations. 4. September 2009 -- Pilot the online communities with internal groups 5. October 2009 -- Demonstrate the progressing online communities at ITEC, holding registration for the ITEC community pilot. 6. November 2009 -- Finalize initial round of online communities and establish facilitators. Give facilitators training in research on online community facilitation, such as Critical Friends Model. 7. December 2009 -- Finish basic features to the online community site and introduce the communities at the High School Summit. 8. January 2010 -- Start full promotion of the communities (adding additional ones if interest/capacity). Perform systemic evaluation of the process so far, determining next steps.

**Estimated Budget** • Two Apple XServe servers @ $7000 each (one initial, one down the road for load balance). These would feature a RAID on-site backup plan. Additional offsite backup to be done via Heartland data de-duplication backup system. • 900 hours of programmer development time from June-December (in the past, we have paid $36/hr, which would mean $32,400) • An addition 20 hours/month of programmer maintenance time afterward ($720) • All additional hours (training, recruitment, facilitation, etc.) to be done by AEA staff and their partners (no additional funding set aside for that) • Additional bandwidth is not anticipated at this time, but could be a possible expense down the road (as will hardware replacements in the course of a traditional replacement cycle for equipment).