Changing the Meaning of Community: E-learning in Rural Newfoundland, Canada

摘要

This case study reports the recursive sociocultural effects of an e-learning infrastructure collaboratively developed to service five semi-isolated communities in Newfoundland, Canada. A wireless wide area network provides inter-community videoconferencing and the delivery of online courses to K-12 schools. Using interviews and observations, the research findings reveal how the change from locale-based communities to virtual communities influences organization structures, practices, values, and power relations in schools that in turn influence how people make sense of and use educational technologies.