Ricki Feuereisen
February 6, 2015

While reading this chapter, I learned a lot about learning communities and the importance of it. Learning communities comes with quite a few benefits, including decreasing teacher isolation, increasing commitment to the mission, having shared responsibility, being able to have more powerful learning opportunities and lastly, a higher likelihood of fundamental and systemic change. (pg. 33) What does a learning community focus on? It focuses on learning how to learn together as a group and team, instead of thinking individually. You learn more from a group and bouncing ideas off one another than thinking individually.

            When it comes to teachers, learning communities has a positive affect, meaning, teachers can get critical feedback on an assignment or project they are planning to use in their classroom or maybe have already used. This gives teachers a chance to improve their work. It also gives teachers a chance to bounce off new ideas off one another, teachers really get the chance to collaborate and communicate, which is an important factor to take part in. Lastly, teachers also have the chance to problem solve with learning communities, whether it being in person during school or online.  When it comes to students, a learning community affects them in a positive way also; students have the chance to learn to learn together. Students have the opportunity to communicate and problem solve. Students can take on roles when completing assignments and/or projects, they are given the chance to motivate one another and keep each other on track.

This relates to the project in this class, because I am working with a group, and we need to communicate with each other in order for this project to be a success. We can bounce off ideas with one another, and with these ideas it allows for us to come up with new ideas we may not have thought of individually. We also provide each other with feedback on if we think an idea would work for this project.