E- Learning Community - Report Example

Student Name: Subject: Topic: Tutor: Department: Institution: Date Due: Running Head: A report on an e- learning community. Part 1: The blog Post Introduction A learning community is a human organization that focuses on the development of skills and knowledge and the profits that emanate from building on the synergies of individual(s) with common interest as they work to share understandings, knowledge and skills for a common purpose. It adopts curricular structures as a means to develop exhaustive learning in pre-determined curricular content. In learning communities, groups of persons and centers of learning have come together, joining hands to propel systematic change within the broader society. “This entails sharing of resources, risks and responsibilities” (Himmerman, 1994, p27). The Promethean Planet http: Prometheanplanet.com This is one of the largest interactive whiteboard communities. It provides resources for learning and professional development. The Promethean Academy is the umbrella institution where teachers acquire training, certification and their professional or carrier development. This academy is endowed with the structures that enhance learning and carrier development in innovative and the effective range of options for training. This enhances the delivery of an excellent learning experience, which is known and recognized universally. It is also well known for continuous professional development. This learning community has a mission statement that explains its commitment to the delivery of a framework that facilitates an integrated and holistic approach to support the adoption and integration of interactive education solutions in the classroom. First, a learning community boasts broad network that is not only local, but also traverses the extensive geographical regions internationally. According to the university of Tasmania department of Education (2003, p12); Learning communities are developed where groups of people, linked geographically or by shared interests, collaborate and work in partnership to address their members’ learning needs. Learning communities facilitated through adult and community education are a powerful tool for social cohesion, community capacity building and social, cultural and economic development. In promethean academy, training services are offered in both one on one workshops and online courses. There is also webinars available that is used by a section of those taking online courses to compliment the services offered to them. In a learning community, there is also the structure of subjects offered. Promethean specifies the kind of subjects it offers. ,the availability of student learning map, secondary ICT for personalized learning, learning assessment styles and other resources like the learning catalogue, made it possible and efficient for me to identify it as a learning community. A learning experience needs many resources to enrich the process of acquiring both knowledge and skills. Learning resources enhance a prolific skill development and explicit knowledge acquisition. Promethean as a learning community provides every resource-aspect that learners and professional developers need. Due to this, I will be able to get the opportunity to make interactions with these important resources for reasons of gaining experience in my subject concerns. The process of learning is a network-like phenomenon that represents the players in the environment of learning. My expectations are in absolute tandem with .the aims, objectives and the logistics of the Promethean learning community. I believe in utilizing the best that is offered and expect that to be delivered in time and in quality. I expect to get necessary assistance where applicable and to be directed on what to do and in what places and time. This will means that I get access to most of the learning resources adequately. Cooperation with the system of administration and management will be very useful for my entire learning process and experience with the community. PART II: THE REPORT ESSAY. Promethean academy is a part of the promethean planet. It is concerned with services delivery to people all over the world. The core responsibilities that promethean academy is concerned with is the provision of professional training, learning activities and professional development. It has learner management system that takes care of every learner’s profile and academic information. Student learning map is provided to enhance the whole learning process and activities that take place within the definition of the communities mandate and responsibilities. Personalized learning in this community is improved by the availability of secondary ICT. Online services and webinars are available for online users with great technological measure employed to make services efficient for subscribers. The participants involved in this community comprise of instructors found both on face-to –face workshop and online. Learners have the opportunity of sharing learning resources and their experiences in the whole process. Group talks are developed and encouraged. These are done to improve learning outcomes in science. In the national strategies, a document talk to learn is developed. This is outlined as a strategy that describes the impacts and reasons why it is important to develop science group talks. It also contains lessons and instructional materials that aid the whole of the learning process. To determine if the students are auditory, visual or tactile learners, promethean academy has developed learning styles assessment. These are gathered through the use of ActivExpressions or Activvotes. The subject areas in which it is applicable include; ELL/ELD/ESL/ESOL, grammar reading, vocabulary and writing, psychology, sociology and teacher tools. The resource content is assessment and the file format is flipchart, which has a size of 2.17MB. This is applied from grade 3 up to post-secondary levels. Formative Assessment and Personalized Learning is also one of the learning resources available in promethean organization. This is a resource type designed for professional development. It is best suited for Early Childhood (Pre-School) – Kindergarten-2, 3-5. A year five class is followed where by children create their own songs and a year of one class during the course their three literacy lessons in ‘pirate week’. This is done in collaboration with university of Bristol’s effective lifelong learning inventory project (ELLI). This project uses certain dimensions in the teaching and learning of children. There are seven-dimension used. These include learning relationships, changing and learning, creativity, resilience, curiosity, meaning making and strategic awareness. There is the use of an animal to represent an understanding that will enable the child to remember the meaning of what is taught. It is the choice of children to choose the kind of dimension to use at the beginning of every learning activity. “This presents a practical way of learning which is quite pragmatic in nature”, (Alan Rees, 2007). Within the learning environment, learners are faced with a large task to perform. They are the consumers of knowledge and skills within the confines of learning. This therefore means that, learners will have to take great responsibilities for learning to be effective and qualitative. First, as a learner in a classroom or a workshop, I need to take notes or in other general term, put down information relayed. For this information acquisition to be effective, certain clarifications will be necessary. The best way to seek for clarification of a point is through asking our instructors/facilitators or teachers to expound on some sections that I did not get quite well. Also I should ask questions that demand concussive and clear and clear answers or feedback. To demonstrate that I am an active learner, I should be able to take questions that are asked by my facilitator with an aim of answering impeccably. This is a morale booster in learning that energizes the process of acquiring knowledge and getting hold on it. Learning process involves strategies that inculcate in learners the necessities of working together in groups to produce results. As such, learners are always provided project works that demands their collective commitment and hard work. Due to this, as a learner, I get actively engaged in the group tasks, coordinating my group members where possible for purposes of achieving a general objective. This kind of participation is very healthy as it enables learners to be part of the larger learning community with necessarily playing spectators to the good results of learning. Tasks are often done in groups or in pairs. However, this learning design presents its challenges that require adaptation. For instance, there are those learners accustomed to whole-class or individual work. They find it really difficult to assume roles in groups. A part from learners undertaking projects in group, group discussions is also encouraged. For instance, a teacher may pose a topic question and request the learners to divide themselves in groups and deliberate on that said topic question. After group discussions, each group is expected to present its own findings and results. In the process learners exercise their abilities to work as a team with a sole aim of providing good outcome. Learners should demonstrate that learning in class is applicable, in real life situations. As a learner, there are expectations of me to show that going through the process of learning creates better individuals, different from what they used to be before the learning itself. Changing the society’s ways of doing things but to do them in a much better way that demonstrates conception of life skills is my mandate as a learner. Learning and the input from the community in the whole process of learning, go hand in hand. This is to say as a part of the community, learning depends on the contribution of the community. May be one need to understand what in this context we mean by ‘community’. Learning in itself is a process that is only achievable due to the presence of knowledge and skill dispensers and the consumers of that process. The process of learning is also surrounded by other external issues that are determinants knowledge and skill applicability. For instance, government policies define what learning should entail and creates the consumerization of the skills acquired through learning. In this regard, a community encompasses both human and physical factors that surround the process of learning. From the community, the process of learning draws its beneficiaries and players. Teachers and students and the non-teaching staff are all community members. After acquiring knowledge enough to go into the professional field, the learners go back to the same community to seek for employment. In this aspect, learning is encouraged as those who go through, the process obtain confidence that there are jobs for them albeit competitive, and so is the motive to work extra hard to get good results needed in the job market. Learning will be conceivable only under prevailing peace and unity. A peaceful community, void of discrimination, ethnicity and favoritisms without doubt promote learning, whereas the viz a viz disorganizes the whole process and negatively influence its viability and conception. This to say a conducive environment is a must factor in learning. Community should provide structures that encourage learning. Learning facilities are just as important as the infrastructure in centers of learning. This will enhance positive influence on the whole process of learning and produce good results; competitive learners who are able to beat the odds of professional and socio-cultural challenges. A positive learning environment will enable the following to occur, maximize the learning of every student, help children and youth become full participating citizens of society and help to build a sense of community lead to cost savings and economic benefits as prevention is less expensive than incarceration. The promethean academy has all it takes to promote learning in various dimensions. The availability of learning infrastructure, well organized online learning services and a dedicated staff of administration and facilitators/teachers/instructors. The spirit of the learners in the education process, their undying passion for knowledge has provided an ample atmosphere for learning in this community. Personalized learning, science group discussions and simulation have made learning here more efficient and attainable. As indicated in its definition of roles (promethean, 2012); it facilitates a holistic approach to integrating interactive education solutions in the classroom, available online at Promethean Planet at Promethean’s Academy facilities, or in person at schools. The Promethean Academy offers courses in everything from getting started with ActivInspire, to achieving optimal results implementing Promethean solutions in schools. It focuses on creativity, connectivity and in-depth comprehension; its courses are much like an interactive lesson—exciting, engaging, integrated and flexible. One of the challenges it faces that may hinder its effectiveness is the large number of learners in different categories it deals with. Dealing with such a large community is interesting though may not be likeable to many. This is due to the existence of a series of bureaucratic processes and stages that learners have to contend with. Quality services may not be possible to all online users. However the set-up of this learning community is learning friendly. Learning together with other people from diverse backgrounds and a multicultural society is just interesting as well as important. One gets to create a fabric of networks and relations that are useful in shaping our socio-cultural values and tolerance. Knowledge and skills obtained is very important in our quest for carrier prospects as it is universally acknowledged. In conclusion, Promethean academy is an academic network that has promoted education standards and professional development. The services provided are of international qualities and standards that prepare learners to competitively and competently succeed in their employment opportunities. It homes various international intellectuals that are committed to academic excellence and carrier development. Facebook as an e-learning community Facebook is a network that exhibits very simple application in its functionality. It enables users to create their profiles, provide a link to their friends, see the updates of friends, enable the creation of private or public groups, enhance the users to initiate and hold group conversation. From our simple description of a learning community, Facebook obviously fills the void as seen in the recent developments that have turned Facebook from just being mere social networks for entertainment to serve multipurpose designs. It has been used to initiate online conferences in the corporate learning and encouraged trends and innovations. Facebook as has been seen enables the users to use threaded discussion capability. This is efficient in learning due to the fact that there is an already existing massive audience that does not require profile information to be uploaded. This has the impact of extending the relationship formed during the conference. In learning systems Facebook is used as a recruiting vehicle. For instance, people who attend events always through the notification system alert their friends. Varied interests stem from here and further inquiry makes it possible for others to join. In learning communities the participation of group members is quite vital. A part from Facebook providing such platforms, it also reinforces the activities of other learning communities. Members of a group notify one another of their next course of action in as far as their individual group activity is concerned. The training of teachers becomes more efficient through this social network. It draws attention to the relevance of various technique involved in teaching peer teaching in gaining teaching experience is essential. In this case, members of any teaching group also, notify themselves of their different teaching experience. The organization made through Facebook, even though amorphous, contributes to the general inference of how learning can be diversified to reach a large number of persons within any given short duration. The ability to create applications is very important as it builds a ground that operates on the basis authentication. This makes learning secure for a particular group of e-learning. They can create programs and blogs that aids their learning or training activities but which is restricted to only the subscribed members. Learners can document their experience in through Facebook as well. In the center of social learning is Facebook. It has enabled the exchange of important ideas and relevant thoughts, and getting to know more about fellow industry and practitioners. The growing number of low cost online and social programs projects an informal but well-structured approach to learning. The recent developments have seen individual or corporate provisions of links to cheap learning and training resource. References Adler, L. K. (2001). Uncommon sense: Liberal education, learning communities, and the transformative quest. In B. L. Smith & J. McCann (Eds.), Reinventing ourselves: Interdisciplinary education, collaborative learning, and experimentation in higher education (pp. 149-159). Bolton, MA: Anker. Baker, P. (1999). Creating learning communities: The unfinished agenda. In B. A. Pescosolido & R. Aminzade (Eds.). The social works of higher education (pp. 95-109). Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Cox, M. D. (1999). Peer consultation and faculty learning communities. In C. Knapper & S. Piccinin (Eds.), Using consultation to improve teaching (pp. 39-49). New Directions for Teaching and Learning, No. 79. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Http: peter Himmerman; learning community http: Prometheanplanet.com Cox, M. D., Cottell, P. G., & Stevens, M. P. (1999, October). Developing and coordinating faculty learning communities: Procedures and materials for practice. Workshop presented at the 24th annual conference of the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education, Lake Harmony, PA. Wright, W. A., & O'Neil, M. C. (1995). Teaching improvement practices: International perspectives. In W. A. Wright & Associates (Eds.), Teaching improvement practices: Successful strategies for higher education (pp. 1-57). Bolton, MA: Anker. Fluck, A, (2008) M-Learning Landscapes: e-Learning for ubiquitous school science educatio’, Australian Educational Computing, 23 (1) pp. 24-32. Fluck, A, (2001) ‘Social Effects of New Technology in Education’, Journal of Information Technology Impact, 2 (2) pp. 43-54. Robertson, M* and Webb, IL and Fluck, A, (2007) Seven steps to ICT integration, ACER Press, Camberwell, pp. 179. Fluck, A, (2007) Action! 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