As I mentioned in my previous post, there are six “key drivers” that I see pushing Professional Learning Communities to evolve into Professional Networked Learning Collaboratives. They are Technology, Wisdom Stewardship, Cultural, Accountability, External Approach, and Continuous Change, Choice, and Disruption. These six “key drivers” are having a major impact on education and make the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative uniquely suited to handle the impact effectively.
Lets examine “key driver” number three.
3. Cultural: the increasing desire for real-time feedback, the expectation of immediacy and the compression of time and space
Peter Sheahan writes in his book Flip, “Human beings have always been impatient. Today we expect things to happen faster than ever before. And not just a little bit faster, but over the last few years a lot faster. The quicker something can be something can be done, the quicker we expect it to happen…”
Time is one of the most crucial resources any PNLC has. Teams of teachers using the resource of time meeting together to meet the needs of students must make as effective use of time as possible. The PNLC will allow educators to leverage the cultural changes in our society, one being the expectation of immediacy. We are comfortable with Instant Messaging, Twitter, web cams, etc. As the technologies continue to become part of our greater culture, the immediacy of which we expect responses from others will only increase.
If data can be pulled up in an instant with databases such as Edusoft or Data Director, why not people? The PNLC will see it as natural that people else where with knowledge, expertise, data, and information to share will participate in real-time collaboration through use of synchronous technologies such as video or phone-conferencing. Why wait for answers when you can have instant real-time feedback?
No teacher would argue that the increasing demands of high stakes testing and legislation such as NCLB is driving them to get more teaching squeezed into the same amount of days. Education is going to have to adapt to the compression of time as we asked to do more in the same space of time.
The compression of space from physical to physical and virtual will change the nature of what can be done collaboratively. As the world gets “smaller” we are going to have more opportunities to interact with people from all over the world, whether in person or through technology. This may create more opportunities for our teams to collaborate with and learn from those who have expertise, data, information, or direct knowledge to help increase students learning. Collaboration across the world via technology is the result of compressed space and distance.
Tom Peters summed it up best when he said, “Distance is dead.” The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative embraces it.
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