Virtual Learning Commons

Building the Virtual Learning Commons

The new vision of the learning commons sets the library as a hub of activity in the school – a magnet for a range of teaching professionals to connect with students and to extend their own professional learning and practice. The teacher-librarian is a facilitator in this setting, coaching other professionals, connecting them with each other and with resources. The library’s virtual space can be as much of a hub as the physical space, where resources, technology, user-focused design and innovative teaching practices mingle to empower learners. (The Virtual Library as a Learning Hub (Anita Brooks Kirkland 2009)

…consider the virtual library space. Is it a one way street with only information streaming out to clients? School Library websites are traditionally repositories of digital data. They need to be transformed into collaborative multi-way spaces in which to work, learn, create, play, and celebrate just like in the physical commons. (Loertscher, Koechlin, Rosenfeld, and Zwaan 2011)

Below are the five main rooms that can become the start of your own VLC.

Beginning the Construction

For the persons selected to build the real learning commons for the class, this is what will happen:

Try this free template using Google Sites

It has all the scaffolding you need to create the five rooms pictured above. Once you download the template and rename it, you have a working site that you can control.

Other templates include:

• For the Elementary School
• For the Middle School:
• For the High School

Additional Tools for Constructing a VLC

• Weebly Edu
• Wikispaces
• Wix
• Zoho

The VLC Breakdown

Objectives:

• Content: Create a VLC that replaces the traditional school library website. The VLC consists of five major portals:
  • The Main Page and Information Center
  • The Literacy Center
  • The Knowledge Building Center
  • School Culture: The Living School Yearbook
  • The Experimental Learning Center - the center of school improvement
• Process: Exhibit the skills necessary to build a VLC in the Web 2.0 world. We will use Google Sites to do so in this class, but other tools can be used with notice and acceptance by the professor.

Assessment:

• Content: Since quality is more important than quantity, the site will be judged on its potential to be collaborative. The tour of the site will point this feature out. However, the site should cover the major content areas that a vibrant VLC should possess. You should exhibit the ability to construct the five portals and be able to allow different persons to post and edit in each of those portals.
• Process: The student's web 2.0 construction skills will be evident in the construction of the site.
• All five of the portals must be exhibited, with two of them done in more depth. One of these "rooms" is the information center that should be constructed by the owner of the VLC and the other will be the Knowledge Building Center that will be constructed jointly during Projects 2 and 3.

Products:

• Create a VLC. If you are in a school where you can create a real VLC, do so. If not, then assist someone else in the construction of a VLC. You will need to submit both a URL and a five minute tour of your VLC using a Jing video by DUE DATE.
• If approved by the professor, you should add your VLC video tour to the International Virtual Learning Commons Idea Bank.