THE PURPOSE OF THIS SITE
We created this site to provide an example and illustration of a learning community for other teachers to draw upon in their own teaching or consider in their research.  The concept of a learning community encompasses approaches to teaching that many in education are advocating--collaborative learning, authentic activities, embedded assessment, project-based learning, and teaching as coaching, for example. This site is unique because it represents an example of a teacher documenting the learning community that she developed within her own school.  The site is also unique because it incorporates multiple forms of media--reflections, conceptual diagrams, still photos, videos, (and eventually student work) in order to illustrate pedagogy in practice.

Described, analyzed and illustrated here is the high school journalism program Esther Wojcicki and her students have developed over the past 15 years at Palo Alto High School.  The student newspaper they produce, The Campanile, (Click here for a 9MB pdf of the newspaper) is one of the largest high school newspapers in the country and has won many awards for reporting and publishing.  Click here for a quick overview of the learning community--to access the advanced journalism staff structure and production cycle.

To view another site where three Stanford students describe Esther's practice through the lens of technology, and offer a glimpse of a day in the life of "Woj," click here; for a more in-depth study of Esther's practice see the dissertation this work is based on (Kim Austin, 2000).

OUR INTENDED AUDIENCE
We developed this site for journalism teachers, high school and middle school teachers across subjects interested in building communities of learners in their classrooms, and teachers interested in multimedia methods of presenting the scholarship of teaching. The navigating guidelines page will give you several options for how to view the site.

YOUR FEEDBACK
We welcome your feedback as you view our site.

Next page...