Virtual Communities as a Canvas of Educational Reform

Just posted the following over at TechLearning blog where I am serving as one of the collaborative bloggers. Would love it if you would scoot over there and leave me a comment. Consider it a house warming gift to my newest blogging dig. See ya there!

How do we promote the knowledge, skills and sense of urgency for 21st Century teaching and learning among all teachers in our schools? How do we come to the place we are willing to change – to risk change – to meet the obvious need for better alignment between "school as we know it" and the needs of 21st Century learners?

I believe that as the physical and virtual worlds converge to become the ‘real world’ of teaching and learning, virtual learning communities will play increasingly important roles in educational reform.

Defining Virtual Community-What is it?
My earliest memories of the term “virtual community” came from Howard Rheingold’s book The Virtual Community, about The Well, a social experiment of the 1980’s. Mr. Rheingold explains that virtual communities are “cultural aggregations that emerge when enough people bump into each other often enough in cyberspaces.

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