Thoughts on the IB Virtual Community
The IB Virtual Community (IBVC) has just been launched and is currently rolling out to IB schools who request access:
The IBVC offers IB stakeholders the ability to connect, communicate and collaborate with one another. Tools offered within the IBVC include blogs, wikis, discussion forums, file uploading (documents, images, audio and video), individual profiles, the ability to form groups and other social networking functionality.
I’m very curious to get a look at how it is laid out. Thanks to Adrienne, I’ve got a minor interest in design and usability so it will be interesting to view it from that lens. Personally, I think anything will be an improvement over the current system the IBO has for sharing best practice and connecting with others.
The day before the IBVC was launched, ReadWriteWeb had an article on 5 Ways Tech Startups Can Disrupt the Education System. Way #2?
2. It should encourage grassroots adoption
Along with the right price comes the right marketing and adopt ion strategy. As such, many disruptive education technologies are aimed at the individual teachers and students themselves, rather than at the districts-as-a-whole. This is important as this grassroots approach means that the tools pass the “smell test” of teachers in the classroom, meaning that the tools are usable and useful. With a multitude of free tools to chose from, however, interoperability will be key so that educators don’t find themselves locked in to one product or service.
Or, as @surreallyno said on Twitter:
I certainly hope not. I think the IBVC offers a great opportunity for IB schools, teachers and students to connect to one another.
My hope is that this will make it easier to connect, much like facebook made it easier to stay in touch with long lost friends/acquaintances or joining a Ning made it easy to find people with the similar interests. I think this has tremendous potential in increasing the amount of collaboration between schools that, while working within similar frameworks, tend to do a lot of work in isolation.
My fear is that, because of this (hopefully) ease of access, teachers will not share their knowledge or experiences in more ‘traditional ways’ with teachers outside of that community, kind of like how people now post all of their personal updates on facebook and would never consider blogging or Flickr or Twitter. Because the IBVC is not an open community, this might mean that a lot of good ideas will only be shared behind that wall of the IBVC. I’m also curious to know what the terms and conditions for use are. The IBO is quite strict with respect to copyright and I will be interested in knowing their stance on materials that are posted by community members.
How do you feel about the IBVC? Is this something that you or your school will join?
My school (Berlin Brandenburg IS) is taking the plunge. I think I’m going to try to get the MS excited about it along with the upper PYP as a means of connecting on collaborative projects.
As a (former) DP teacher, I think the DP students will have a great space to really share tips and tricks with eachother. It could be a real “flattner” if they allow it to be open and allow student-student discussion to go on unimpeded.
We’re also looking at it as a platform where we can share personal projects, films, art, and G4 science projects while taking inspiration and ideas from other schools who are doing the same.
For teachers, it could be a nice networking platform if, as you say, it’s designed right.
Above all, to be engaging for any users, to draw people in, it’s got to capture the right “social” feeling, similar to the way Ning has for many class and professional groups.
Fingers crossed.
Jeff
Fingers crossed, indeed! It sounds like you guys have a great vision of how you would like to use that space. I totally agree that it could connect DP students from around the world, but I wonder if they choose to use IBVC over facebook? Or are they already using facebook in a way similar to what you have suggested?
I’m hoping that it will be the teachers who will get the most out of it. A well-designed community of learners (I stole that phrase from Adrienne!) would do more to model the Learner Profile and Fundamental Concepts (of the MYP) than anything that is currently going on. And I love your thought of taking inspiration and ideas from other like-minded schools. I hope it’s much more than that too. I would love to see sharing of some of the nitty gritty details: lesson resources, unit plans to be adapted, assessments and criteria, etc.
Fingers crossed.
We’ve just signed on (American International School Dhaka). I’m hoping to generate a lot of interest across the two programs we use (DP and PYP), although I’m not sure it’s target audience are PYP students, I’m hoping at least the older students will be able to use it. Some of the tools they’re offering “Class Collaboration” and “Online Mentoring” would be perfect for the Exhibition.
The terms of use can be found at https://ibo.epals.com/content/termsofuse.aspx and the privacy policy at https://ibo.epals.com/content/privacypolicy.aspx.
@Kassandra Boyd I think for the younger PYP students, you are probably right. They are not the target, although their teachers will (might?) benefit from the possibilities of collaboration. At our school, our grade 5s (and next year our grade 4s) are currently in a 1:1 environment so they can definitely benefit from using the IBVC. Since Ning has gone to a paid model, the IBVC might be a good alternative for online Exhibitions. The only downside, of course, is it would not be open to family members to view without (probably) violating the TOS.
Thanks for the links to the TOS and privacy policy. I’ll give them a good read through soon.