Experimental Learning Center


Purpose of this page: This entire page is devoted to school improvement initiatives by administrators, classroom teachers, Learning Commons staff, parents, and outside experts. It is a place to experiment, do action research, develop and track initiatives, and succeed and fail by both individuals and groups.
Virtual Teacher's Lounge

In this column, all types of
  • helps
  • projects
  • opportunities
  • announcements
...could be constructed as a collaborative.

Helps with
  • standards,
  • professional development opportunities, advanced education or training,
  • major documents to be read, or
  • other helps
...might be listed and/or blogged about by the administrators and the adults in the school.

VLC Examples:

Current School-wide Focus Issues

This column might be reserved for the current school improvement initiatives and professional development in progress.

It might include:
  • calendars
  • workrooms
  • progress reports
  • plans
  • evaluations
  • action research projects
  • activities connected with improvement

Administrators, Learning Commons staff, workshop leaders, project directors, or outside consultants contribute here and monitor their projects.

VLC Examples:

Educational Technology

This column might be given over to the use of technology in ways that boost teaching and learning.

It might be the home of the student iSquad, whose responsibility it is to test out and teach a wide variety of Web 2.0 tools to adults and students around the school.

Recommendations by a variety of adults and students might be useful here and could include:
  • tips
  • tutorials
  • guides
  • pilots and trials
  • experiments
  • resources

VLC Examples: