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ENT Gallery: Developing a Community of Practice
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| Museum Educators |
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 Two members of the education department staff and two living history interpreters from Plimoth Plantation participated in the online course, Teaching to Standards with New Technologies. Plimoth initially enrolled them in the course to serve as an historical resource for the teachers but from the beginning they worked with the teachers to develop the Packing for America project. The museum educators were also interested in how Teaching for Understanding (TfU) and the online course experience would inform their role as educators at the Plantation.
The museum educators felt they greatly benefited from hearing the classroom perspective from the teachers (both online and face-to-face) and enjoyed collaborating with them to develop the Packing for America project. They also came to appreciate the benefits of the TfU framework and recognize its relevance to their work at the Plantation.
Thanks to a fairly reliable Internet connection at the Plantation, the museum educators had little trouble accessing the online environment. However, questions about how to effectively use the Collaborative Curriculum Design Tool (CCDT) and whose responsibility it was to post in it were central to their course experience. Upon reflection, several museum educators felt that these issues of online facility and responsibility were merely a symptom of larger issues that went unnoticed during the course, namely, the lack of identification of clear goals and roles.
 The ideas of online facility, goals, and roles became increasingly central for one of the museum educators as she worked on the classroom version of the Packing for America project. Kim VanWormer felt that by continuing to collaborate within the CCDT, she developed a clearer understanding of all of these issues. After the course ended, VanWormer and MaryBeth Kinkead (WIDE World coach and project facilitator) worked together for over a year to refine the curriculum unit. VanWormer and Kinkead said they felt more supported in this collaboration because they spent time clarifying their roles early, and because they shared a common language-Teaching for Understanding.
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