1. The book says that the focus of a learning community is to "engage ongoing collaborative problem solving" they specifically state in businesses, however, I feel that because this can be extended to schools as well as the real world I would finish it with something along the lines of: to make whatever group/organization/etc they belong to run smoother (this information can be found on page 30). The book then goes into learning communities when you specify these communities to education/ school based communities. The book says that school educational communities do these three very important things: 1. They ensure that students learn. 2) They create a collaboration for school improvement. 3. They focus on results. (All three of these items can be found on page 32). I feel that although it is good to have results or a goal in mind that educators need to be wary of being goal oriented to some extent because that detracts from the authentic learning that their student's crave.
2. The book also had a lot to say about the benefits of learning communities. The book said that learning communities: decrease teacher isolation, increase commitment to the mission, share responsibility, create more powerful learning, and promote a higher likely hood of systematic change (all of which is listed on page 33). These are all great things that can be accomplished if set up correctly and teachers should definitely be given time to form these connections.
3. Although not directly mentioned in this chapter this discipline benefits teachers by providing a way for them to express themselves as well as gain creative ideas.This also helps teachers not feel alone against all of his or her students. This allows teachers to branch out and do more for their students.
4. Although not mentioned in this chapter project based learning allows students to make connections in many other subjects as well as in the real world. When a math teacher and a government teacher team up to teach about economics it really allows students to see more than one perspective on issues and allows them to see deeper into the subject. This also allows teachers to collaborate better to meet the students needs.
5. The book also proposed what it felt the components of a shared vision were in a learning community. The book said: clear sense of mission, shared vision of conditions that must be in place, people must work together in collaborative teams to determine the best practice, organized into groups with a leader, focus on student learning, people need to be goal/ result oriented, people need to collaborate with one another, people need to have the same values/ beliefs, commitment needs to be made to continuous improvement, and the people must see themselves as life long learners (all on page 35). Even though these are important fundamental goals I do not feel all of them apply in this kind of situation. For example, a religious person and an atheist can work together on projects that are not theology based without much hassle for the most part.Also, I feel that teachers need to not focus so much on being goal or result oriented because when they do that many teachers tend to teach to the test which takes away from meaningful project- based learning.
6. The concept in this chapter reinforces why we need to work in teams to make this project really do well. When putting the elements of a collaborative project into place we learn new ideas and grow into really cool individuals that will be able to help our students grow no mater what.
I like how you brought up that PBL can be used in more subjects than one. It's important that we see how beneficial learning communities can be both in school and outside of school. By working with others we can turn good ideas into great ideas with the input of our colleagues.
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