When I was first speak­ing with schools about 1-to-1 not long after edi­tion 1 of my book (now in its 2^nd edi­tion) was pub­lished, two big ques­tions were – Is your school/district wire­less? Are you pro­vid­ing stu­dents with email accounts?  Back then, not every school could respond to both ques­tions in the affirmative.

Now we are see­ing more ubiq­ui­tous devices includ­ing tablets, lap­tops, smart phones and the com­plex­ity that ensues. This pre­vi­ous post went into some of the issues faced by schools when intro­duc­ing BYOD; the com­ments pro­vide more depth and ideas as well. Any 1-to-1 or BYOD school is wired now as it would make so sense oth­er­wise. Nearly all schools and dis­tricts offer some type of email for stu­dents if they are 1-to-1.

Like many, I’ve become intrigued by the con­cept of flipped learn­ing – an idea even more fea­si­ble when stu­dents all pos­sess some type of device that is as mobile as they are and which is used to learn, review and syn­the­size con­tent away from the class­room fol­lowed by more indepth social, hands-on learn­ing when back in the class­room. To me, it’s all about learner cen­tric­ity – if done right. This is a great thing and what we have always wanted – the learner has the resources at his/her fin­ger­tips, learn­ing and tools for learn­ing are con­ti­nously avail­able – and the user-created arti­facts of learn­ing are orga­nized and avail­able to the learner at any time.

How­ever, the piece that is also needed is some type of online learn­ing com­mu­nity. Rather than email, which we all know has become a boon­dog­gle in our lives and which stu­dents are mov­ing away from in droves, an online learn­ing com­mu­nity can offer a safe, con­tained space for teach­ers and students.

I’ll be pre­sent­ing at NCCE on Fri­day, March 1 at 2:30 a ses­sion enti­tled “A ‘Cloud’ for Flipped Class­rooms” which is all about how imple­ment­ing flipped class­rooms, or really most all tech­nol­ogy inte­gra­tion projects, ought to have the cor­ner­stone of an online learn­ing com­mu­nity. The ben­e­fits of a learn­ing com­mu­nity include:

• Pro­vid­ing a cen­tral space for learn­ing that extends the classroom
• Elim­i­nat­ing “Web 2.0 site of the week” syn­drome which results in
  • login fatigue (try­ing to remem­ber which ID and pass­word to use) result­ing from all the dif­fer­ent applications
  • frac­tured stu­dent expe­ri­ences (hav­ing mul­ti­ple inter­faces to know and navigate)
• Pre­vent­ing email clutter
  • Rather than the teacher main­tain­ing lists of inter­nal or exter­nal emails, the com­mu­nity uses its own inter­nal messaging
  • Mes­sag­ing can include send­ing stu­dent doc­u­ments, mark­ing them up, and return­ing to the stu­dent via attach­ments – track­able and centralized
• Threaded dis­cus­sions
  • Real dis­cus­sions can occur and be followed
  • Pro­motes collaboration
    • Stu­dents can work as a whole class or in smaller groups with teacher oversight
• Increased stu­dent accountability
  • No lost paper – the Inter­net is every­where – even at McDonald’s!
  • Date and time is stamped with work turned in
• Shared resources
  • Every­one sees the links, the resources, the pho­tos, pod­casts, etc.
  • Assign­ment post­ing, turn­ing in
    • The assign­ments and the work are centralized
    • Class cal­en­dar
      • A cal­en­dar for the class is avail­able to view events, assign­ments, assess­ments, etc.
• Easy inter­faces
• • Stu­dents use social media now and most online com­mu­ni­ties emu­late this
• A safe place to learn dig­i­tal citizenship
• • Prac­tic­ing how to be a good dig­i­tal cit­i­zen­ship using social media in a class­room com­mu­nity can pro­vide real exam­ples of what to do and what not to do, along with teach­able moments
  • Teach­ers may wish to imple­ment “L.A.R.K.” a con­cept from my book
  • Dig­i­tal learn­ing should be L — Legal (adher­ing to copy­right and other laws) A — Appro­pri­ate (images and ideas should not be offen­sive) R — Respon­si­ble (tak­ing care of dig­i­tal tools and resources) K — Kind (know­ing how to respect and be kind to every­one in a community)

Full dis­clo­sure: I man­age a great (IMHO!) prod­uct that does all this. But this list above applies in gen­eral as well. 1-to-1 needs an online learn­ing com­mu­nity to unleash its true potential.

Your thoughts and com­ments are welcome!

-        Pamela Livingston