Last week I posed some questions about the Academy through the lense of the Masters unit I'm currently taking. A couple of the community members were kind enough to respond to that post and links to their responses can be found here and here. So given that I put the questions out there in the first place it's only appropriate that I give my perspective.
- What is the common vision of members of the Academy community?
The Academy website defines the following goals for its activities:
- Increasing the number of people who are capable of producing live, interactive webcasts
- applying the open source community approach to skill development
- creating a place that formally recognizes proficiency, excellence, and innovation in these new media skills
The members of the community come together from many different countries, education systems and levels of education. So it is, in some ways, quite amazing that the people who have involved themselves manage to find a common ground. The thing that strikes me about the people that I have met through the Academy is that they are all prepared to be open to making new connections with other people. They are prepared to share their knowledge and also want to learn from others. They are prepared to go more out of their way to help their fellow community members. The community members are prepared to enter into open discussions that bring forward new things to learn and issues to be considered. My perspective is that the community members share a vision of a community where they can learn about how to apply new technologies to their own lives and the lives of their students. The community is growing into one where professional knowledge and experience is shared via the webcast shows that are developed as members proceed through the Academy training. As more people participate in, and complete the training, the community grows; so to does the audience as new webcasters introduce members of their other networks to their webcasting activities.