In the field of education, one thing I have found in my short career is that it is one big community. I have been fortunate to be able to use learning communities to aid my own teaching. I regular check in with the diocesan learning communities within my diocese. There is one set up for Literacy: Mindful Teaching and Learning and a Ning for Numeracy: Numeracy Now. One thing I hadn't thought of was creating my own Ning for my students. I have had a class blog before and have developed a class website through Google for homework.
One thing that I found interesting is the idea of a wiki in this age of sharing ideas in a group. We constantly warn students on using wikipedia to gain information as it could have come from anywhere. I had always had the impression of a wiki being a place to get information, not a place created to share information within a group. With Google Apps for education these days there are so many ways to collaboratively create pieces of work. A couple of years back I used the website Edmodo. The kids really engaged in the work on this website and it was set up a little like a social network for education. One thing that is important with Wikis, Nings and the like is for the students to know and understand the purpose of the site. In my experience, the kids took advantage of the ability to chat to other students. If I had taught them the purpose of a site like that this would not have happened.
I have had the opportunity to be involved in the implementation of Google Apps at a school level. This being the case I was able to easily create and share websites with my students. Some of which directed the learning for a whole unit of work: Antartica Website. I was lucky enough to find a similar website through an online learning community. That is one of the best things about education and technology. The willingness of those involved to share their ideas with others for the betterment of all students.
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