Drupal Schools Network

Your classroom is the center of your solar system,  but there are "learning circles" in various orbits that can provide partners and new ideas.  There are many more "new ideas" out there than anyone could possibly master, but a community you belong can be a better filter than Google.

These circles are within and without your school buildings. Within, there are grade level and subject level teams at a minimum, but there are many things to talk about when you meet with those teams. If this is your hear to explore "Learning 2.0" you are already joining other virtual teams - either through your public school region (in New York, we have NYSC&TE, one of the ISTE tribes) or your private or charter school network (the Coalition of Essential Schools, perhaps).

A new hybrid phenomenon is the faculty use of Learning 2.0 to create online communities around physical conferences.  As with field trips, the scaffolding and transference of professional development events are exponentially amplifed by pre-event and post-event learning activities, so this benefits the benefit of the conference to attendees and their host schools.

It also provides learning circle opportunities for faculty who cannot attend the conference. No teacher has time to join every online conference on every relevant topic that comes along, but depending on your own cycles of engagement, now might be a good time join one...and  if you're a public school teacher, you can join private school conferences and benefit from more advanced positions in the technology integration curve.

The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) Online Conference has an Online Community created to help focus conversations around the conference themes. Its NAIS NetVibes community, formed around a group that will be attending (or wishes they could attend) the 2010 NAIS Annual Conference in San Francisco, utilizes amultitude of new media tools providing a place for everyone to share about the session topis (see more at http://annualconference.nais.org/?navItemNumber=3D152604)

If any of the sessions, themes or topics of this year's conference are of interest, you can join the NetVibes community discussions and get notifications when others share. You can respond via comments to this blog, via twitter or twitter with a link to a longer post elsewhere, or the NAIS Facebook Page.

-Bram