The Exchange Community
Many of you already know what an online community is: a modern gathering place for communities of practice to share ideas and resources. For The Exchange, our community allows educators to connect over everyday problems and help one another find answers without sifting through other off-topic items in a safe and welcoming place. We are building a dynamic space for communication and collaboration among our users including pages, forums, message boards, a training area, and associated tools to make your jobs easier. The image below is our landing page. This will give you an idea of what it could feel like when logging into our community.
Think of The Exchange online community as a place to reach out to colleagues who have answers to your questions. Many people participating in this community will have faced the same challenges and come up with solutions that may work for you. We hope it provides a safety net for educators to collaborate and test ideas while learning from one another. This space is for anyone in The Exchange community looking to learn, grow, and share. Dmitri Adler, Chief Solution Architect from Data Society, sums up the work like this: “Communities shouldn’t be general purpose; they should be specific to a mission. Effectively, it is a safe space that allows people to talk about specific needs and specific missions that they all feel consistently passionate about, regardless of what may happen in other communities. We envision that would translate into a higher level overall of learning and a higher level of education for all kids across the state of Texas.”
Educators working at the regional, district, and campus levels experienced the community landing page below in guided walkthroughs conducted during the week of April 24th. We have already implemented changes from those groups to make this product more user-friendly, and the Data Society Team continues to update its designs based on this user feedback. The designs for the first release will be available to Exchange members in October 2023.
The Exchange First Release
The Exchange is a groundbreaking new platform that will revolutionize how districts across Texas access and utilize education technology. The first version of The Exchange, set to launch in October 2023, will establish the data infrastructure and core features for the base product offering, including an online community, administrator console, and school and educator dashboards.
