Virtual Communities in Early Education

Paula Hobgood said...
How are virtual communities being used in high schools or lower grades to prepare young students for college virtual communities? Would online teams be effective at a young age?

Paula, after I read your question I also became interested if virtual communities are used in elementary, middle and high school education. After doing some research I found out about a virtual community called “Learning Circles.” AT&T Learning Network is the first organization to provide structure for this type of learning. What happens is “teachers and students in small, geographically diverse, working groups are matched to accomplish shared educational goals,” quotes Margaret Riel. Riel (1993) found that the Learning Circles “enable students from different cultures, regions, religions, ages, perspectives, and with a range of physical and mental strengths to work together in a medium that treats diversity as a resource” (Riel, 1). I think that this type of diversified learning can help children to learn at a collegiate level.

Online teams can be effective at a young age if they are the right type of team. I have only been able to find a couple of research projects on this topic. Nancy Rohland-Heinrich and Brian Jensen (2007) found that many high schools are starting to require that their students take at least one type of online course as a requirement to graduate. This is where the trend is starting to go for high schools.



Reference:
Reil, M., Learning Circles: Virtual Communities for Elementary and Secondary Schools
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/Guidelines/Riel-93.html.
Rohland-Heinrich, N. & Jensen, B. (2007) Library Resources: A Critical Component to
Online Learning. Multimedia and Internet at Schools. Vol 14, 2, p 8-12.

Virtual Conferencing

Esther Mitchell said...
Is it difficult to set up virtual conferencing? Is virtual conferences secure from eavesdroppers and how does this add to the difficulties with setting up virtual conferencing?

Esther, there are many different types of virtual conferencing that you can use and most of them seem to be very easy to set up. There are conference calls where you can have the group all call into a single number and there are types where you can have the operator call you. These are all very simple to use.

Then there is video conferencing and web conferencing. All of the ones that I researched say that they are secure. There are also additional security features that you can purchase to make sure that the websites are secure. These are also very easy to use. In some cases you may have to download the software, but after you do that they are not difficult to figure out.