RSA #3- A Vision of K-12 Students Today

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-ZVCjfWf8

RSA #3- A Vision of K-12 Students Today

            During week five of our module, the reading focused on the ability to build online learning communities. This week we focus on the many aspects that are necessary in order for an online learning community to be authentic and effective. There are many online management tools that help to foster these online learning communities, and it comes down to finding an online tool that will fit best with your learning communities desired outcomes. The common goal of all online learning communities, are that they are structured to foster learning and teaching. According to page 5 in Building Online Learning: Effective Strategies for the Virtual Classroom, “Learning is an active process in which both the instructor and the learners must participate if it is to be successful.” (Palloff, Pratt; 2007).

            With the idea that in order for learning to occur the instructor and learners must participate, I took the time to seek out an alternative way to share the importance of that statement. As I was looking through YouTube I came across, what I consider to be an inspirational video portraying numerous students sharing statistics and their feelings on the importance of being 21^st century learners. The students in this video showcase the changing of an era from “old fashioned” teaching to that of learning and being a part of the technological age. I found this short video quite amazing, due to the statistics. According to the video A Vision of K-12 Students Today posted by bjnesbitt on November 28, 2007, “76% of teachers have never used Wikis, blogs, or podcasts.” As I am aware that this video is more than a few years old, this is a staggering percentage of teachers who are not accessing all of the learners in their room. If a teacher is not accessing all of the learners in the classroom, then in turn they are not creating an effective learning community.

            According to Building Online Learning Communities: Effective Strategies for the Virtual Classroom, “There is one important element, however, that sets online distance learning apart from the traditional classroom setting: Key to the learning process are the interactions among students themselves, the interaction between faculty and students, and the collaboration in learning that results from these interactions.” (Palloff, Pratt, 2007). As you will see in the video as well, students are begging to be engaged and to be a part of their learning. As the reading suggests the key to learning are the interactions between the instructor and the learner, in order to make an online learning community successful. By allowing the students to collaborate with their instructor, the interactions between them become more authentic and thus the online learning community becomes an area for learners to become instructors, and vice versa. In an online learning community all participants must contribute equally to gain the most from an online learning community. All in all, the video and the reading both suggest that it is important for all learners and instructors come together to form a learning community.