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Establish a national model for community learning through common teaching and learning tools, cross-sector professional development, and a customized collaborative learning project.
The Live Wire Learning Community initiative calls upon an ENTIRE community to share responsibility for students' learning by:
- providing a community-wide infrastructure that connects learning places and extends learning time
- delivering intrinsically motivating, learner-centric tools and technology that engages students & supports academic learning and college and career readiness skills
- implementing robust cross-sector professional development and ongoing support through onsite training and a virtual Community of Practice (CoP)
- completing a customized learning project.
Launching in Boston
Complementing Mayor Thomas Menino's award-winning Community Learning Initiative, the Boston Live Wire Learning Community project seeks to connect traditional "silos of learning" to accelerate learning and skill development for all students in the Dorchester/Franklin Fields neighborhood.
Featuring four leadership venues — Joseph Lee Elementary School, Lee Academy Pilot School, Codman Square Branch Library, and BCYF Perkins Community Center — the Boston Live Wire Learning Community pilot is made possible in part by generous donations from Boston-based FableVision, Candlewick Press, and Wacom. As part of the pilot, every teacher and classroom in grades 2–5, as well as the community center and library, will receive a collection of New York Times best-selling Author/Illustrator Peter H. Reynolds' storybooks (The Dot, Ish, The North Star), learning software from FableVision (SmartMoves, BrainCogs, Essay Express, Stationery Studio, and Animation-ish), and professional development courses and support from FableVision and the Boston Public Schools. Students will use the software to complete a customized literacy/writing project using multimedia tools. The finished projects will be showcased this summer and next fall.
"With the Community Learning Initiative, parents are not enrolling their child in a single school, but rather, a set of institutions — a public school, a neighborhood branch library, and a local community center," Mayor Menino said. "These facilities, their programming, and their personnel are all aligned so that children have a whole network of caring adults at a series of sites throughout their neighborhood."
Watch the Live Wire Launch Video! |
