RSA 4: Building and maintaining

Link:  http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/7012

Discussion:This module continues to focus on the importance of learning communities and how technology can really foster stronger conversations and help to maintain solid learning communities as well.  A learning community is essential to professional development in addition to integral to instructional improvement.  Technology and online communities help to maintain conversations among professionals, offer a variety of time allowances for participation, and provide a central location to record and keep information.

In “Building and maintaining an online professional learning community,” Linton reinforces much of what was discussed in this and previous modules.  She reaffirms that a professional learning community has a lasting impact on teaching as opposed to a workshop.  The article also mentions several resources for helping to maintain online PLCs, such as Wikispaces, Twitter, Ning, and Google Docs.  While all these resources could be helpful, it is the job of each individual PLC to determine their own goals and structure and which resource would be most beneficial to maintain those goals and that structure.  By creating online collaboration, teachers can be given the “time and space to learn together and work toward common goals” (Linton, 2012).

This article completely reaffirms the information throughout our readings and the current module.  Linton also sites from the Learning By Doing book and simply offers other technology resources to use in order to foster online communities.  While she does not offer any new information, seeing a source that confirms much of what we have been reading in the course is helpful, especially since I found this source through an Internet search as opposed to the Concordia search engine.  It clearly shows that numerous educators believe in the power of the professional learning community model.

References:
Linton, Jayme. (2012). Building and maintaining an online professional learning community.  Learn NC. Retrieved from http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/7012