Online Communities

The MathScape: Seeing and Thinking Mathematically Curriculum Center provides support to school districts using the MathScape curriculum. The center offers training institutes and workshops, hosts a Web site offering online support, develops implementation materials, and disseminates information about the curriculum’s effectiveness.

This research project investigates the effectiveness of online professional development programs for teachers. Specifically, it addresses three questions: (1) How effective are online programs in improving teachers’ content knowledge and classroom practices as compared with other models of professional development? (2) How do interactions among participants and facilitators differ across online models, and how do these interactions contribute to learning? and (3) What factors make for successful online professional development programs?

Sponsored by the Council of Chief State School officials (CCSSO), the moderated online discussion (MOD) project is a year long initiative designed to support the work of Leadership Issue Groups (LIG) by stimulating conversation on education leadership imitatives. Six issues serve as the primary focus for discussions: (1) data-driven decision-making; (2) role, responsibilities, and authority; (3) assessing leader behavior; (4) resource allocation and incentives; (5) governance; and (6) high school leadership.

GSDL provides high-quality digital resources to: (1) help educators promote interest and engagement with STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education by learners of all ages, particularly females; (2) encourage learners to pursue science education and future careers in science; (3) provide an inter-disciplinary examination of the role of gender in the creation, teaching, and learning of science; and (4) build community among all interested users for the purposes of inquiry, information exchange, best practices development, and mentoring.

EDC’s EdTech Leaders Online program (ETLO) is providing online facilitator training to teams from five state departments of education (Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Virginia) to prepare them to deliver online training to teachers in each of their states on incorporating new Web tools such as blogs, wikis and podcasts into their classroom curriculum. Participants will learn to facilitate ETLO’s “Learning and Teaching with Web 2.0 Tools” online workshop, which prepares educators to help students use these tools safely and develop classroom curriculum that incorporates these tools.