Collaborative Online Continuing Education: Professional Development Through Learning Communities

By us having such awesome tools as being able to do school work online is something we need to be so grateful for. It offers new opportunities for models of the professional growth of teachers. Many communities share a way of knowing, a set of practices and shared values that comes from these very procedures. In these communities it brings together students, teachers and community members in directing the same courses and education in new ways. By having community technologies is provides opportunities for teachers where they can reflect and talk with their colleagues and build more of an understanding for different approaches, standards and curriculum. A great example of a learning community is The Maryland Electronic Learning Community which shows the development of a teacher and all the support groups that built up the formal training which is linked with continuing collaboration and support. Overall, these communties offer many strategies for reform that include everyone: parents, learners, teachers, community members, and political leaders. This helps encourage everyone that is learning to take a lead role in the learning process and the construction of knowledge.