Community

We are not human creatures living in a spiritual world.
We are spiritual creatures living in a human world.
Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit mystic

Building Virtual Communities: Parallel Universes of the Mind

Where are the front porches that lead to lemonade and conversations? What binds together a community in cyberspace? This essay explores different types of communities - from rural Scottish communities to natural systems - to derive principles of interdependence that can inform how we create virtual communities.

Education, Empowerment and Enrichment: After School Programs

How do you build a learning community among 17 community learning centers? In South Dakota, USDE and the DIAL Consortium supported the development of this interactive web site. Site coordinators provide data for this dynamically generated website that provides public information about programs and attendance to gain support and participation. Behind the scenes, it provides private data for billing and evaluation.

Inquiry Based Learning

Building sustainable communities is the focus of a USDE Technology Innovation Challenge Grant entitled "Interactive Learning Communties." The goals are to build capacity for teaching, learning and scholarship through technology tools and the development of and interdependent culture. to support curriculum development teams, a virtual space was designed. Teams of parents, teachers, students and partners create inquiry based modules that are eventually "published" for other teachers within the DIAL Consortium schools to use.

Essential Questions

The idea of essential questions, formed by scholars, teachers and students, has become a cornerstone of many reform efforts around the country. Teachers who use essential questions report that they are a powerful tool for focusing daily classroom activity on a meaningful goal. For students, essential questions are a clear statement of expectations - what they will know and be able to do, allowing them to take more responsibility for taking learning away from every lesson.

Virtual communities require an act of imagination to use
and what must be imagined
is the idea of the community itself.
Marc Smith

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