Mid-Atlantic Regional Technology in Education Consortium   1301 Cecil B. Moore Ave. Ritter Annex 9th Floor Temple University - CRHDE Philadelphia, PA 19122 800-892-5550 215-204-5130 (fax) General Inquires: Laurence Peters Judith Stull   Technical Assistance: Barry Mansfield   Professional Development: Joan Pasternak Temple University Center for Research in Human Development and Education As research in virtual communities suggests (Shumar & Renninger, 2002) “the availability of stored resources and information, coupled with the flexibility in the time and space of usage, may well account for the attributions of utopian possibilities for community via the Internet” (p. 11). However, it might be the case as well that these stored resources are also critical in invoking imagination as participants move from online to the real world and from one space of participation to another. Emerging innovative spaces for teacher professional development such as RC contribute to the creation of new forms of imagination and identification of teachers’ roles and abilities, while new knowledge is needed to improve the way such systems are designed and implemented. Bielaczyc and Collins (1999) believe that the quality of a learning community is determined by its ability to foster a culture of learning that involves everyone collectively. Designers of technology-enhanced environments need to partner with practitioners in determining where new forms of engagement and participation are supported and constructed.     References Bielaczyc, K., & Collins, A. (1999). Learning communities in classrooms: A reconceptualization of educational practice. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional-design theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory, Vol. II. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Brown, J. S., Duguid, P. (2000). The social life of information. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Kling, R., (1980). Social analyses of computing: Theoretical perspectives in recent empirical research. Computing Surveys, 12(1). Pomson, A. D. M. (2005) One classroom at a time? Teacher isolation and community viewed through the prism of the particular. Teachers College Record107(4), 783–802. Pugach, M. C., & Johnson, L. J. (1990). Developing reflective practice through structured dialogue, In R. T. Cliff,, W. R. Houston,, & M. Pugach (Eds.), Encouraging reflective practice in education: An analysis of issues and programs. New York: New York: Teachers College Press. Sarmiento, J., Schifter, C., Pasternak, J., & Mansfield, B. (2005, June). ReflectionConnection: How can collaborative environments support teachers as reflective practitioners? Poster presented at the international conference on Computer Support for Collaborative Learning, Taipei, Taiwan. Schifter, C., Sarmiento, J., Mansfield, B., & Pasternak, J. (2004, April). ReflectionConnection: An alternative approach to capturing teacher practice. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. San Diego, CA. Shumar, W., & Renninger, K. A. (2002). Introduction: On conceptualizing community. In K. A. Renninger, & W. Shumar (Eds.), Building virtual communities: Change and Learning in Cyberspace (pp. 1–19). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Star, S. L., (1989). The structure of ill-structured solutions: Boundary objects and heterogeneous distributed problem solving. In: L. Gasser and M. N. Huhns (Eds.): Distributed artificial intelligence, Vol. II. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, pp. 37–54. Previous    Page 1 2  3 4  Copyright 2001 © MARTEC