Professional Development | News

ASCD Updates Online Educators' Community to Boost Sharing and Commenting

• By Christopher Piehler
• 08/04/14

ASCD, a global community dedicated to excellence in learning, teaching, and leading, has redesigned its ASCD EDge online community. The community provides more than 76,000 educators with a way to connect and interact with friends, colleagues, peers, and mentors in the field of education.

Members can use ASCD EDge to share and comment on documents, video, audio, photos and blogs. Users can also post comments or recommendations on friends’ walls and profile pages. The new responsive design of the community features several updates:

• Professional Recommendations: Members can draft and submit recommendations for approval by the recommended individual before posting them publicly.
• Blogger Home Pages: ASCD EDge users can create their own professional blogs, and all bloggers will have their own home page that will feature an archive of blog posts filtered by the most recent, most viewed and highest-rated. The redesigned site will also feature “bloggers” as a main navigation item to help community members find their colleagues’ blogs.
• Document Sharing:  Prior to the redesign, educators could share documents only with members of a specific group. They can now post documents so that the wider community can share, rate or comment.
• Related Groups:  Community members will now see related groups that are similar to the group they are currently viewing. They can join these related groups with one click.
• Ask & Share: The new site now provides a space for users to start conversations with fellow educators, post questions or ideas to the community, and receive feedback from others in real time.