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Wirth Professor Chris Dede discusses how virtual communities of practice empower reform in schooling, in this excerpt from The Digital Classroom.
As sophisticated technology alters the nature of work and citizenship, the skills and concepts students need to be productive adults are changing too. Simply aiming for higher standards of achievement in today's curriculum will not prepare pupils for 21st-century life. Students—and teachers—need to master new skills that the current curriculum may not address, skills that were not central in the industrial society of the past century but are vital in the knowledge-based economy of the new one. These skills include the ability to:
Of course, new learning technologies are only worth the time, effort, and resources required for widespread implementation when they are used appropriately. However, sophisticated computers and telecommunications do have unique capabilities for enhancing learning, especially through a new model of education called distributed learning in which classrooms, workplaces, homes, and community settings are linked for educational activities. Distributed learning:
Three years ago, the National Science Foundation (NSF) launched a series of multi-disciplinary studies to examine how sophisticated information technologies can foster Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI). This initiative was prompted by the fundamental shifts that new interactive media are creating in the process of science. Scientists are moving away from an investigative process based on reading others' research results in journal publications as a means of informing and guiding one's own scholarship. Instead, scientists are engaged in virtual communities for creating, sharing, and mastering knowledge: exchanging real-time data, deliberating alternative interpretations of that information, using groupware tools to discuss the meaning of findings and create new conceptual frameworks. NSF calls this process knowledge networking. The KDI studies are examining these virtual communities for their potential impact both on science learning and on learning in general. Already, some knowledge networks are in place, illustrating the range of purposes, designs, and outcomes these virtual communities of practice can accommodate:
By building bridges from reflective innovation to standard practice, knowledge networks provide an excellent venue for exploring whether such changes may be adapted to and sustained in schools. The fundamental issue is not whether new instructional tools are more efficient at accomplishing current goals with conventional methods, but instead how emerging media can provide an effective means of reaching essential educational objectives in the technology-driven, knowledge-based economy of this new century. Since computers and telecommunications increasingly enable students and teachers to have rich interactions with resources outside of classroom walls, the mission of schooling is inevitably changing, too. About the Author For More Information
HGSE News, Harvard Graduate School of Education
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