There are many of the conditions for successful community development seen in the MirandaNet Fellowship story. I want to reiterate a few of the key strengths, the case study research revealed, that truly make this an exemplar community.
MirandaNet’s strengths over the years of development:
- building true partnerships between academia, in-service educators and technology companies and vendors
- holding an unrelenting focus on professionalism, respecting the practice of teaching with ICTs
- clearly valuing the celebratory and social aspects of building social capital within educator groups
- offering new professional roles for in-service school teachers (researcher, leader, presenter, collaborator, mentor)
- sustaining a self-supporting infrastructure and financial model that brings activity to the members
- the stratified community structure that scaffolds internal support, close relationships and capacity building
- the contagious and unflagging energy, vision and leadership of the community director and founder supported by others who have stepped into leadership roles
- the project-based nature of the community research activity – whether individual action research or community consultation people are doing more than talking together
- the high profile the community, and its members, have attained in the field, educationally, politically, and with technology providers.
The next week or so of blog posts will be offered by a number of community members beginning with the community director Christine Preston. These posts will offer the most up-to-date insights into the community priorities, activities, and future. We will close this case study with a real time field trip to the community at the close of next week. Times and dates will be confirmed soon.
