Content + Connectivity = Community: Digital Resources for a Learning
Community
Content + Connectivity = Community: Digital Resources for a Learning
Community
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Publication or External Link
Date
1998-11-18
Authors
Marchionini, Gary
Nolet, Victor
Williams, Hunter
Ding, Wei
Beale Jr., Josephus
Rose, Anne
Gordon, Allison
Enomoto, Ernestine
Harbinson, Lynn
Advisor
Citation
DRUM DOI
Abstract
Digital libraries offer new opportunities to provide access to diverse
resources beyond those held in school buildings and to allow teachers and
learners to reach beyond classroom walls to other people to build distributed
learning communities. Creating learning communities requires that teachers
change their behaviors and the Baltimore Learning Community Project described
here is based on the premise that access to resources should be tied to the
assessment outcomes that increasingly drive curricula and classroom
activity. Based on examination of curriculum guides and discussions with
project teachers, an interface for the BLC digital library was prototyped.
Three components (explore, construct, and present) of this user interface that
allows teachers to find text, video, images, web sites, and instructional
modules and create their own modules are described. Although the
technological challenges of building learning communities are significant, the
greater challenges are mainly social and political.