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Middleweb: A Dynamic Internet-Based Professional Learning Community
Carolyn Faulkner-Beitzel, Marsha Ratzel, John Norton, Bill Ivey, Beverly Maddox

Winter 2004 Issue

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Article:	Middleweb: A Dynamic Internet-Based Professional Learning Community Carolyn Faulkner-Beitzel, Marsha Ratzel, John Norton, Bill Ivey, Beverly Maddox The MiddleWeb virtual professional community emerged in the year 2000 as an outgrowth of MiddleWeb, a large website dedicated to middle grades reform. It is supported by grants from the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. The community thrives through a collection of interrelated email listservs, which are moderated by MiddleWeb editor John Norton and volunteers from among the community’s 600 members. The authors believe MiddleWeb demonstrates the potential of an Internet-based professional learning community to support personal growth, professional development and school improvement. They also argue that such a community’s listserv-based environment removes many traditional barriers to true professional communication, including time constraints, and reduces the professional isolation that so often stifles teacher development. The listserv format differentiates professional development since it allows for follow-up and reconsideration of topics according to individual members' needs, something a single session in-service by its very nature does not provide. The authors acknowledge that many listserv groups fail to develop into true virtual professional communities and identify six conditions they believe are necessary prerequisites to such development. Read the rest at http://www.ncsu.edu/meridian/win2004/middleweb/

 

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Meridian: A Middle School Computer Technologies Journal
a service of NC State University, Raleigh, NC
Volume 8, Issue 1, WInter 2005
ISSN 1097-9778
URL: http://www.ncsu.edu/meridian/
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