Professional Support Community

I had something else completely planned and ready to submit when it hit me what I really wanted to talk about. The fascinating part about education, as well as other parts of life, is that it is perpetually changing. We either change with it and create something better. Or we don’t. When we choose the later we know that eventually one of us, either the system or our method will cease to exist. More often than not, it is our method. Eventually no matter how long we held out, it seems we need a computer to succeed. Eventually we had to give up the hopes that that square wheel would roll. Will this be the same with our virtual learning communities, our online high schools and colleges? Will we have to give up the idea that “this too shall pass” and get on board for real?

In this course of study it would be great to say we are all on board with online education. However, there are drawbacks. One of the biggest drawbacks is the social aspect of college and high school. We don’t get the face to face communication, the making things work with individuals in groups in person. There are the times of bumping in to people after class or in the hallway and discussing the Shakespearean plays which are awesome and in online education are almost impossible. However, there are ways around it. With Pronto and discussion boards we get some of this social aspect.

But what we miss, what we lack, what we don’t realize we don’t have until we get a glimpse, is a group of professionals. The professional interaction just doesn’t happen. Suddenly I realized this at the Summer Institute. We were walking from one event to another, our demographics all across the board and discussing an issue in education. Suddenly it was clear that the peer to peer sharing online which we boast in Web 2.0 all had roots. It is nothing new that we listen to those around us more than we look for advice from outsiders. But online it seems so different than in person. In person we feel so empowered because you can see the bodies around you discussing the issue and becoming passionate alongside you. Online we feel that we may find others like us but can never tell just how truly into it they are.

A professional support community is a force with which to be reckoned. These communities of individuals are people who may support you when things are not going your way. They may create a gateway to other information which would support your lifelong learning.

Online learning is proving more and more to be a constant. It isn’t going to go away. So we have a choice. We can either embrace it or we can repel it. Embrace means change, means creating the tools so we can have to social interaction that constitutes a professional support community.