Leveraging+Collaboration

Etienne Wenger on Iowa's Community of Practice and Innovation
June, 2011 “This approach is not merely to provide training to teachers, but to cultivate four discipline-based communities of practice through which pioneering teachers help each other develop practice to implement the new pedagogy in their own day to day work. These communities of practice provide a space for social learning during the pilot and a foundation for scaling up within these disciplines and to new ones.” Reimagine [|Connected Learning: "EVERYONE"]. This film examines the overflowing abundance of knowledge, expertise, and social connectivity in the networked age and the power of bringing people together who want to learn together through the internet and social media. Guided by six learning principles and three core values, connected learning is the outcome of a six-year research effort supported by the MacArthur Foundation into how learning, education, and schooling could be reimagined for a networked world. The film asks: Communities of Practice: COLLABORATIVE EMPOWERMENT* Communities of Practice offer state agency and district personnel a promising approach for engaging stakeholder groups in collaboratively solving complex and often persistent problems in education. Communities of practice can help state and district educators drive strategy, solve problems, promote the spread of best practice, develop members' professional skills and help organizations recuit and retain talent.
 * 1) ‘Might the information age free us to pursue learning centered on individuals and not institutions?’
 * 2) ‘Perhaps each of us has a part to play in the possibility of education?’
 * 3) ‘Might a broader definition and responsibility for education bring us all closer together?’

"Communities are a new way of doing work. Everyone-including state agency personnel and all stakeholders- in a Community of Practice- is considered an expert in his or her own context. Together with state agency personnel, stakeholders seek information and solutions from each other. These solutions are implemented and participants report back to the Communities of Practice on how well implementation was achieved. Based on feedback, the Communities of Practice determine the next steps." IDEA Partnership (2009). Meeting Challenges Through Communities of Practice: Facilitating Community. Retrieved from http://www.ideapartnership.org

As Iowa schools address Common Core, technology integration and the resulting changes needed in pedagogy and school operations, critical planning questions, events and activities are necessary in order to build a quality online or blended learning program. This includes preparing teachers to teach within this new learning ecology. AEA PD Online, and its new branch AEA K12 Online & the Iowa Communities of Practice and Innovation, were formed to help provide support and resources to districts and teachers as they address these critical issues and professional learning activities.

Leveraging Collaboration
AEA PD/K12 Online believes strongly that an opportunity exists to work collaboratively with those school districts throughout the state working to achieve similar goals in implementing quality online and blended 21st century learning opportunities for both students and teachers. Simply put, why recreate the wheel? Through a collaborative effort, there is an opportunity for school districts to have local control and autonomy while working together to provide quality online/blended learning experiences for students, as well as teachers- with efficiencies realized in cost, due diligence, time, energy, resources, and experience.


 * [|Defining Learning Communities]. Sue Kilpatrick, Margaret Barrett and Tammy Jones, Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania, Australia
 * [|STEM Teachers in Professional Learning Communities: A Knowledge Synthesis] What are the Differences between STEM PLCs and PLCs in Other Content Areas?........ The concept of Professional Learning Communities became popular in the ...Lave and Wenger studied “communities of practice” among adults, studying ...
 * Classroom Aid's [|20 Tips for Creating a Professional Learning Network]

* This phenomenon of partnership between public, private and non-profit organizations that increases community capacity to shape and manage its own future is said to be “collaborative empowerment” (Himmelmann, 1994, p.27). []