I have had the opportunity to visit a number of our member schools and share an overview of many of the training sessions that have been my focus during the past two school years. Much of what I want to share with teachers are the possible benefits of a variety of web 2.0 tools that are being made available by ESU #13. In a previous post I spoke about the concepts of communication, collaboration, produce, publish and audience. These five concepts form a circular learning environment that could be seen as learning 2.0. Students would have the opportunity to use a variety of web 2.0 tools to communicate and collaborate with others that have common interests or are participating in similar learning activities. Once the communication and collaboration progresses, the opportunity to actually produce some type of output could arise. The use of web 2.0 tools makes the next steps really exciting. The product that has been created can be published, and the audience for the work is world wide. If an active community can be developed, the published work should lead directly back to starting new communication and collaboration.

Given the rural setting of the region served by ESU 13, the use of web 2.0 tools to create professional learning communities has real potential. Many of the schools we serve are very small, and a grade level or subject area teacher may be the only person in that district with that specific assignment. The region is also very large, and demands a real sacrifice in time and travel to attend scheduled meeting. If teachers in the region are willing to make the commitment to participate, a variety of professional learning communities could be developed. I have been encouraging this type of professional communication for about a year, with very little movement. As I continue to post entries and read numerous other edubloggers’ posts, it is amazing to see the opportunities this technology could provide. Once teachers become comfortable sharing with others from the region, they may expand their vision to include educators from around the world. I did a little research on bloggers in my blogroll, and even in this limited list, found this group of bloggers really does flatten the world. We all have the opportunity to participate in professional learning communities with anyone, anywhere, anytime.