WIDE: An Inside Look at Online Learning

New and existing technologies have implications in the classroom. Graphing calculators, word processors, digital cameras, and the Internet have enormous potential for teaching math, English, and science. The challenge is helping teachers understand how to use them effectively with their students. Stone Wiske was interested in helping teachers learn to use these technologies. To accomplish this task, she developed Education with New Technologies (ENT), an online community of practice for educators that allows members to exchange ideas and resources on implementing technology in the classroom within the pedagogical framework of "Teaching for Understanding."

Parallel to ENT is Professor of Education David Perkins' site Active Learning Practices for Schools (ALPS). Like ENT, ALPS supports the application of research-based pedagogies. Because of the similarities between these two projects and users' requests for more structured support, ENT and ALPS joined forces to develop online professional development courses in a project called WIDE World - short for Wide-scale Interactive Development for Educators. WIDE World provides online professional development courses that draw upon ideas found in the ENT and ALPS websites as well as other related projects. The courses are designed to engage the participants in experiences that model what the participants might do in their own classrooms.

Find out more in these Ed. magazine articles: Exploring the WIDE World and Virtual Classrooms: A Global Success Story.