Encouraging community conversations about digital learning skills and school reform in Colorado

By Wesley Fryer On December 10, 2008 · · Add Comment

According to the “about” page of the ColoradoLearns wiki:

…the Navigator Project…brought together Colorado policymakers, educators, and other education stakeholders in June 2007 to build a consensus on 21st century learning. Conference participants produced a broad vision for 21st century learning, as well as statements about what 21st century learning looks like and why it’s important. Now comes the interesting — and essential — part: Making it happen in schools and districts across the state. There’s much to be done to specify HOW to achieve this vision.

“Message From the Future: Change Education Now” is a YouTube marketing video for this effort to catalyze conversations around 21st century skills and needed school reforms.

Basically, this is a fear-based “the people in China and India are going to eat our lunch economically if we don’t change our schools” plug, similar to the documentary “Two Million Minutes.”

The “Promising Practices” page of the wiki includes specific projects, initiatives and activities which support the goals of this overall school reform agenda. The discussion forum of the wiki shows lots of recent activity in the way of new posts, but not lots of replies to recent posts. I’m wondering if teachers are being required to share a new post here as part of staff development workshops? With 185 members to date, ColoradoLearns appears to be a growing community. I’m thinking it would be great if our Oklahoma Creativity Project had a similar growing learning community. Our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices learning community is now up to 225 members, but I certainly wouldn’t say we’ve crossed a “tipping point” of participation like other social networks like The Global Education Collaborative or Classroom 2.0 have. Hopefully we will in 2009 as we offer many more workshops for Oklahoma TitleIID grant awardee school districts.

Are you aware of other statewide initiatives, in addition to ColoradoLearns, which are focused on building a vibrant online learning community focused on educational reform issues?

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