S1.+Key+community+features

toc The proposed Learn2 community is a place where teachers and parents can meet, socialise and learn more about how Web 2.0 technologies are being effectively utilised to enhance and support the new national English curriculum K-12.

The teacher members of this online learning community can learn from other teachers how to use Web 2.0 tools, copy and adapt useful resources, identify online resources, be inspired and supported in their ventures into new classroom activities and undertake further professional development provided within the community or promoted there.

Parent members of this community can gain a better understanding of what their children are learning, understand how the Web 2.0 tools are being incorporated into learning and what is required to support learning activities at home. Parents will also gain insights on how to keep children safe online, engage with other parents locally and nationally, and develop their own ICT skills.

The collaborative interactions between parents and teachers online are expected to extend beyond the benefits that parental involvement has on children's learning and provide teachers with a larger scope and broader knowledge of the communities for whom they work. Working together, this community can construct the new curriculum in schools and homes across the country, and support the learning of all Australian children.

Key requirements of this learning community
The design of an effective e-learning community needs to:
 * 1) Create a climate for sharing and challenging ideas through critical discourse.
 * 2) Establish a social presence where participants can express ideas, emotions, concerns and collaborate with others of like mind.
 * 3) Include clear Netiquette guidelines and instructions for use.
 * 4) Model appropriate responses.
 * 5) Encourage active participation and higher order thinking.
 * 6) Include planned activities to promote social and group cohesion.
 * 7) Allow a role for 'experts' to contribute to the learning.
 * 8) Support high level interactions that foster learning with rich content and the sharing of experiences.

Social features of this learning community
The people that this learning community would serve are parents and teachers: - these are the target users of this community. To a lesser extent, others may benefit from and be of benefit to the learning community:
 * The parents of children from Kindergarten to Year 12 in any Australian schools, whether public, Catholic or independent
 * The teachers from all these schools
 * The parents of children who are homeschooled or in an alternative education setting
 * The staff or community members who support the learning and teaching of children, such as council librarians or teacher's assistants
 * Professional associations such as the ETA and ATESOL
 * People who will take on any of these roles, such as student teachers or parents of pre-schoolers

Distinct community roles
In Personas you can see examples of the kinds of people who may wish to be members of this community.

The question of how many members is ideal for an online community is often raised in informal discussions, but for this online community, the more the better - we are aiming to build a rich resource of learning models and cover a great range of educational settings, socially, geographically, and by stage. Because we see this as a very large and diverse community, **moderators** would be particularly important roles to support and fill. Experienced community members should encourage, support and provide training, either live or recorded online, to help moderators enjoy and grow their role (face-to-face and phone conversations may be beneficial in initial approaches and to ensure a quality of commitment, and a protected area for moderators only would have practical and social benefits - see, for example, [|Online communities: Growing the internet garden]). Moderators should be recruited from both teacher and parent member groups, and small triumvirates for important threads would allow people to rotate through the leadership role.

Other community roles that would be useful in a site as large as the learning community we are envisaging include:
 * reporters or harvesters of recent learning threads
 * welcomers (experienced people who are reluctant to moderate could practice in this role)
 * trainers and presenters
 * librarians and educational researchers
 * editors and technical support people
 * University lecturers

Unique social collaborations
To a large degree, the social interactions that this learning community would make possible are interactions that do not often occur in physical life.

Rank-and-file teachers can learn about the practices of teachers in other states and in other curriculum stages by reading about their projects in journals or textbooks or static websites or occasionally by word of mouth, but they almost never get the chance to talk to these practitioners directly or ask them the questions that will enable them to successfully imitate them and be inspired by them. Examples of innovative techniques and student collaborations are inspiring but can be daunting unless the would-be innovator can see the first steps that will lead to the achievement of a new project.

Uncooperative technologies and unfamiliar Web 2.0 tools are problems for both teachers and parents who, without local support, face big barriers of time and money in exploring an issue independently or paying for expert intervention. This community could provide helpers over a broad range of platforms and set-ups, and a store of how-tos and other helps to give community members shortcuts to solutions. Similarly, the socially constructed resources and the availability of other teachers and parents could help community members make decisions on which resources/technologies/projects to invest in, by providing their experience and opinions.

Social interaction and collaborative learning between teachers and parents are again rare occurrences in the non-online world. By widening the context of their interaction, the Learn2 environment removes problematic issues of power (a parent is not challenging the authority of their own child's teacher when querying tools and practice) and demand (a single teacher will not have the leisure to respond to many parents, but the community, through its scale and by building resources over time, can answer most questions). Learn2's role in making it easy for parents and teachers to participate in a shared project supports learning community values in cohesiveness, motivation and regeneration (Kearns, McDonald, Candy, Knights & Papadopoulos, 1999, quoted in Kilpatrick, Barrett and Jones 2003).

Real-world need for this learning community
Web 2.0 technologies have the potential to radically transform the learning experiences and educational practice of a nation. This learning space opens up these technologies for the school community in the broadest sense.

Teachers and students in both public and private sectors have access to borderless scenarios where global access and knowledge is instantly available. It is the community reaching out into the classroom and the classroom reaching out into the community.

The need to exploit new information and communication technologies
What will the classrooms of tomorrow look like? Laptops 4 learning was instigated this year in NSW public schools with the computer company Lenovo winning the $150 million contract to build laptops for 200,000 secondary students and 25,000 teachers. Over 1,000 interactive whiteboards will be installed across NSW public schools. All this is complemented by Web 2.0 tools and a host of digital devices.

The need for teachers, students and parents to use and be well-informed about Web 2.0 technologies
Children of the 21st century are learning by engaging with online web 2.0 technologies and these technologies are being used by many teachers K-12 to support learning in the classroom setting. Teachers and parents will benefit from a greater understanding of how these technologies can engage, enhance and foster literacy, language and literature skills for students from K to 12.

With the Australian Federal Government's declared intention to significantly enhance internet access for all Australian communities, and financially supporting the provision of hardware in Australian homes and schools, this community provides the opportunity for the key providers of skills development - teachers - to develop their own skills and teaching practice in a collaborative learning environment. It will allow administrators to have the opportunity to conduct professional dialogues on the issues that inhibit greater use of Web 2.0.

[[image:http://schools.becta.org.uk/upload-dir/images/68BW1022opt.jpg align="right"]]The need for parents to reinforce school technology practices
It is also vitally important that parents are equally aware of the benefits to students of using technology to support "responsible and creative learning" (Becta, p.6), since learning is viewed as a partnership between the school, the home and the student. The use of Web 2.0 technologies (both within and outside the home) creates new risks for students, and a joint understanding of risk reduction and cybersafety for students and adults is critical. If this site were to be accessible to students, we run the risk of exposing them to people online that we cannot monitor. Hence this site would be directed at educators and parents; it would be an educative learning community that seeks to demonstrate and explain how Web 2.0 technologies can be used to motivate, engage and involve students in participatory learning activities, particularly within the new English National Curriculum, but with the potential to expand beyond that into other KLAs.

The benefits from collaborative learning for students
According to the 2008 Becta Report (p.5), when used effectively, "Web 2.0 technologies had a positive impact on motivation and engagement through involving students in more participatory learning". Currently the use of Web 2.0 technologies in schools is limited to uploading artefacts and posting information, but the collaborative nature of Web 2.0 is yet to be fully realised.

There is a need for students to adapt readily to new technologies that are constantly invented and for teachers to nurture these. Such technologies are providing children with access to authentic learning tasks and providing opportunities for the higher order thinking skills that the English syllabus demands. Many units of work have now shifted from being paper-based to being offered as digital online resources, with learning objects available from the [|Learning Federation] repository of resources. Students can now participate in real life scenarios with an engaging gaming methodology. This is authentic pedagogy in practice and schools have the tools and communication capabilities to learn together. Engaging students with the technology of today boosts the effectiveness of the teacher as facilitator and learning occurs in a deeper and more meaningful way.