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The Role of Technology in Supporting Learning Communities

The advent of learning communities offers a revolutionary change in the way we organize school learning for all the people who work in education, Ms. Riel and Ms. Fulton point out. It means using technology in education not just to do more of the same, but to do something different, something powerful, something appropriate for all learners in the new millennium. THE CALL for education reform is voiced by many educators for many reasons. The most commonly heard arguments for change are prompted by global comparisons of student learning, changing demands of society and the workplace, the loss of low-skilled job opportunities, and compelling theories about the most effective learning approaches and environments. Moving beyond these immediate concerns, we find that the advent of the third millennium invites still further speculation regarding the skills students will need for success. Among the key ingredients found most often on lists of tomorrow's skills are the abilities to think quickly, to adapt to changing conditions, to build alliances to address large-scale challenges, and to work comfortably in a global information environment. Can our educational institutions change course and send students into the new millennium with these and other skills and attributes they will need to meet the challenges? We suggest that one of the most promising uses of technology is as a vehicle for building and supporting learning communities that will help students thrive in the new millennium. There are many reasons why technology can play a central role in creating effective learning communities. These include the potential of technology to increase our ability to work and learn from others who are distant in time and location.1 Technology supports and expands the sociocultural links that help give us intellectual identity. It also provides new "power tools" for learning that enable students to develop the interpersonal and intellectual skills necessary to construct shared understandings of their world. These power tools are the keys for the creation and communication of ideas. Learning communities powered by these evolving tools provide a way to develop an instructional system that can help students learn to work in a world culture and to shape their destiny in the interdependent world of the 21st century. What Is a Learning Community? In our society knowledge is rarely constructed in isolation. People in a field work together, building on the ideas and practices of the entire group. Culture and cognition create each other,2 and learning increasingly takes place in "communities of practice."3 A community of practice is a group of people who share a common interest in a topic or area as well as a particular way of talking about the phenomena, tools, and sense-making approaches for building their collaborative knowledge with a set of common collective tasks. These communities of practice may be large, the task general, and the form of communication distant, as in a group of mathematicians around the world developing math curricula and publishing their work in a set of journals. Alternatively, communities of practice can be small, the task specific, and the communication close, as when a team of teachers and students plan the charter of their school. The community of practice in schools can be a number of subject- or topic-specific "learning communities." Learning communities share a way of knowing, a set of practices, and the shared value of the knowledge that these procedures generate. There are ways for novices and experts to work in the same system to accomplish similar goals. Community members are recognized for what they know as well as what they need to learn. Leadership comes from people who can inspire others to work better to accomplish shared goals. Evaluation is based on the work of the group, in which the individual is expected to contribute his or her own part. Cooperation rather than competition is stressed. …