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ENT Gallery: Developing a Community of Practice
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| Facilitator |
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The person designated to connect participants from the schools, museum, and university had a clear conception of the potential of this project. The project facilitator, MaryBeth Kinkead had taken her own classes to Plimoth Plantation for field trips as a classroom teacher, and was motivated by the possibility of extending and enhancing such experiences for other students. She had been the WIDE World coach for the online course Teaching to Standards with New Technologies before, and knew the experience could support teachers in collaborative curriculum development, but posed significant technical and conceptual challenges for participants.
Kinkead saw both the promise and the challenges of the project from the first meeting of teachers and museum staff at the Plantation, shortly before the online course began. After this meeting, several of the teachers told her they were surprised to learn that their collaboration would not only create a curriculum prototype for the museum's planned Online Learning Center, but also serve as a possible model for other museum's collaborative development of educational websites. Kinkead thought this expanded scope, along with the unfamiliarity of the task and the newness of the relationships, made some teachers feel uncertain whether they would have anything to contribute.
During the online course, Kinkead worked to foster trust and confidence among the participants. When the group seemed to lose focus and become unclear about how to collaborate online to build the curriculum unit, she suggested they hold a face-to-face meeting. At times, she felt like not only the facilitator but the leader as she helped the group work towards their identified goals.
She believed the Packing for America unit held great promise and hoped it would be completed. After the course was over, she looked to Harvard and Plimoth to take the lead, though she was still committed to serving as a facilitator. She eagerly responded when the museum and the university participants asked her to help polish and test the curriculum unit in classrooms.
Onto:
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