The Ideal Learning Community

The Ideal Learning Community

Often, when teachers think of technology, some may become overwhelmed by the vast number of options available.  Learning communities seem large in number and often similar in a variety of ways that it seems next to impossible to choose the exact correct fit for the classroom.  In my opinion, the most streamlined learning community under one platform is most ideal.

Although Google classroom is certainly an excellent attempt at a learning community, the perfect learning community would not only have an online blog site but the ability to adjust such blogs to the order which best fits the students.  The community would connect each class together as a group but also have a function which connected the class to the other sections of the learning community as well in order to strengthen individuals across ability levels while growing strong as a community within the class itself and as an individual.   Furthermore, this community would include a connection to leaders in the community or perhaps professors at the college level who students could use for collaboration, especially at the college level.

As the challenge to using a learning community is often organizing it, the ideal learning community would not only have a chat function built into the class blog but also a remind function that would automatically prompt students to turn in assignments or communicate with another class member who had responded on the blog itself.  Students would create their own blogs that would branch off the class site as well.

Ideally, as our school often looks for ways in which to involve parents, parents could also be involved in the community as well.  One of the most rewarding experiences for my mother was to partake in the college classroom in discussion.  What a better way to involve parents in the importance of an education that by involving them in classroom discussion.

All in all the ideal learning community is a safe place where students communicate with each other through respect and individually grow in their metacognition by considering viewpoints other than their own.