Introduction

This is a case study about the EdVisions Cooperative, conducted in November and December 2003. This study focuses on the cooperative’s specific uses of the Internet and subsequent results. To this end, I researched the cooperative’s background and web site, and interviewed Doug Thomas, one of the founders and current President of EdVisions Cooperative.

EdVisions Cooperative Background

In 1993, Doug Thomas and Ron Newell founded EdVisions Cooperative. Doug Thomas is the current President of the nonprofit cooperative, Edvisions. In the year 2000, this cooperative joined with the Director of the Henderson, Minnesota based Gates-EdVisions Project. This new addition is a separate entity of Edvision Cooperative and was started to enable Edvision to “have access to grant funds,” stated Doug Thomas.

EdVisions Cooperative Staff (2003)

Doug Thomas

President of EdVisions, Inc., and Director of the Henderson, Minnesota based Gates-EdVisions Project

His special areas of interest are rural community development, secondary education reform, and leadership for educational change.

For ten years, Doug was the University of Minnesota's Center For School Change Outreach Coordinator for southern Minnesota. He served four terms on the LeSueur-Henderson Board of Education, six years on the board of the South Central Minnesota Service Cooperative, and has five years of teaching experience in rural towns.

EdVisions Cooperative was first started to generate excitement in teachers and to revitalize public education. The vision of EdVisions believes that re-organizing teachers into cooperatives allows for teachers to be more empowered, more energized, gives them opportunities for advancement in their profession, and allows for growth as innovative teachers and leaders. As Doug Thomas stated, in his article, Little Did We Know: Ten Years in the Making of the Minnesota New Country School, “if you don’t have a passion to make things better for kids and adults, you tend to run out of energy or lose interest in the fight” (p.3, 2003).

As a result, EdVisions has the following five primary goals:

1.Design and implementation of student-centered teaching strategies;

2.Design and implementation of new school management systems;

3.Design and implementation of small schools or de-centralized schools;

4.Design and implementation of new teacher preparation partnerships;

5.Design and implementation of a repository of teacher practices for dissemination to other schools.

In 2000, EdVisions created a learning model that was recognized both regionally and nationally, with the help of financial grants from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As of 2003, the cooperative included a network of 10 charter schools and 125 teachers. Currently, EdVisions supports teachers with payroll funds and benefits. It has plans to expand its role to additional areas, such as charter school development and planning, as well as faculty and staff professional development.

EdVisions and the Internet

Web Site

For the first two years EdVisions Cooperative did not have the resources to set up a web site. In 1995, the Cooperative built a simple web site. Since then there have been many improvements. Today, the EdVisions web site is the same site that is used for both the Cooperative and the nonprofit, “the site is eight years old, and has been designed and maintained by a consultant outside of EdVisions,” stated Doug Thomas.

The cooperative’s web site is extremely straight forward and user friendly. On the Home page, customers can select from the navigation menu listed on the left side of the page. This menu is on every page of the site, and includes information, such as a list of Edvision charted schools, a news bulletin, projects that are being sponsored, and the Web café (Fig-2).

The EdVisions Web café is an asynchronous format for discussions by teachers and educational professionals related the Edvisions mission and goals.

About the EdVisions Cafe

Open discussion about all things related to the operations of EdVisions: General Announcements, technical Q & A, policies, etc

The EdVisions Cooperative utilizes the Internet, primarily via their web site, in a variety of ways, which contributes to the value of the cooperative for its members and the additional educational professionals its serves. It functions as organizational, communication (i.e., email and Web café), cost and time saving, innovation, educational, and funding opportunity dissemination tools. The following sections are an exploration of the ways in which the cooperative use the Internet.

Internet: Organizational Tool

The Internet has allowed the EdVisions to create a nation-wide cooperative, which would have individual cells of locally controlled cooperative members. This model creates a new way to organize teachers allowing for local staff to establish their own management system. According to Thomas, the Internet allowed the company “to broaden the network of people and to be known at the national level.”

Internet: Communication Tool

The Internet has also become a valuable communication tool for the Edvisions Cooperative. Thomas reported spending about two hours a day, mostly for email, in order to stay in touch with users, such as educators. In addition, educators, no matter their geographical location have the opportunity to communicate with one another via the EdVisions Web Café. Thomas notes, “The Internet broadened the network and we are now able to communicate at the national level.”

Internet: Cost and Time Saving Tool

In addition, EdVisions Cooperative utilizes the Internet to stay current, while remaining small, in order to better serve its members. They believe that for schools to best serve their students and parents, need to be small. Most of the teaching-learning systems and management systems currently used at Edvisions are easier to implement and control in smaller schools where a site-based governance simplifies the parents-community relationship. The Internet allows such schools to stay financially efficient.

Hence, the Internet allows EdVisions members to communicate and work with school planners, policy makers, community members, and teaching staff who would like to see small community schools viable and sustainable, as well as assist in de-centralizing large urban and inner-city schools. Thomas stated the Internet is an efficient and time-saving “way to communicate and to work with more people a well as an outreach and networking tool.”

Internet: Innovation Tool

The Internet allows teachers to engage in the innovative learning systems and new management systems. According to Thomas, the Internet “complicates your life because it adds to your work plate. The mailbox is bigger, so it adds activities to your workload,” it can also create an environment for innovation and cooperative learning.

Still, the Internet has proven to be a great communication and innovation tool as mentioned earlier and Edvisions has been continuously investing in new ways of maximizing its usage. The cooperative’s members have always been on the forefront of innovation in the way they make use of the Internet to assist schools or organizations establish lines of communication. At Edvisions, members strive to form partnerships that will provide new learning possibilities for new professionals and students.

An example of EdVisions innovate use of the Internet is the Educators’ Repository. Currently, the cooperative is in the planning stages of putting together a repository of teacher’s names and practices for the purpose of marketing. Members will have access to teacher strategies, activities, creative practices, etc., which will be available to others in the education field. This repository of EdVisions members’ strategies could be made available on the Internet so all teachers could have access to it.

Internet: Educational Tool

EdVisions’ web site offers opportunities for educators and educational professionals to organize and/ or attend workshops that address current educational issues. The web site also provides a means for educators to educate one another by sharing a variety of teaching strategies. Also, teachers can read news bulletins and articles posted on the web site, in order to stay current with new educational trends and pedagogies.

Educational professionals can also use the EdVisions web site as an educational resource. The cooperative provides resources, such as business plans for charter schools, evaluation technology, and re-organizational strategies, for educational administration and the like.

Internet: Funding Opportunity Dissemination Tool

The EdVisions Cooperative web site dedicates a page to announcing possible funding opportunities for educators and schools. These funding opportunities are both regionally and nationally available. By posting these funding sources, educators from any school, small or large, have the opportunity to secure funding for progressing educational strategies.

In addition, EdVisions members have been working on developing an on-site teacher preparation models in partnerships with higher education institutions. Such a partnership will facilitate the cooperative’s access to grants that would otherwise be unavailable to its members. These grants are presented at the state level, by the State Board members and Legislators, to encourage and honor teachers’ innovations.

Recommendations and Conclusions

In 1993, Doug Thomas (current President) and Ron Newell founded EdVisions Cooperative, a nonprofit organization. EdVisions works to re-organize educators into cooperatives, which allows for teachers to be more empowered, more energized, gives them opportunities for advancement in their profession, and allows for growth as innovative teachers and leaders.

In 1995, the EdVisions Cooperative created a web site, which functions as organizational, communication, cost and time saving, innovation, educational, funding opportunity dissemination tools. These tools make the Internet a valuable resource to the cooperative. It is difficult to imagine how successful this cooperative would be at a national level without the Internet.