Today a student equipped with a smart phone can do research about a topic anywhere so why then would a student travel specifically to the library? A school space must be designed in such a way that students want to come and stay in the space. Is there comfortable furniture? Is there a high speed wireless connection? If Starbucks did not have space for people to meet do you think it would be successful? Schools must be able to facilitate collaboration both on a face-to-face level and remotely.

Schools must promote a platform for sharing both digitally and as a physical space. Many of the digital platforms exist on third party grounds. For example, social bookmarking could be set up through Diigo for a class project with the librarian starting the list, adding her favorite resources and monitoring the quality of student contributions. In a physical sense opportunities for experts, authors and community members to share is vitally essential to encouraging collaboration among a learning community.

As pointed out on Ed4Wb Pull-outs: The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, participatory learning is a major element in this process; “most fundamental to such a change is the understanding that participatory learning is about a process and not always a final product.”

Our school offers the ability for students to take Virtual High School (VHS) courses but only a small percentage actually do. As brick and mortar institutions embrace online learning portals they are in the current form of education taking a risk to outsource but with this risk comes great rewards by expanding options for students to access vast amounts of courses and learning opportunities.

What is your school doing with regard to enhancing your student’s opportunities for different learning platforms?