Research base

Notes by Mica Pollock

At the beginning of the OneVille Project, we decided that as PI of the overall project, one main role for me was Chief Learner. After we had six projects going simultaneously, I was indeed the only person who got to learn from every piece of the project. I learned constantly from everyone I met throughout this work and continue humbly to learn!

After many years focusing on face-to-face communications supporting student success in diverse school communities, I still entered this work as a novice -- as a person newly trying technology to support necessary communications in public schools. I'm an equity person first, a communications person second, and now, a tester of technology when it helps get both done. Moreover, I entered this project as a total novice at participatory design research; I typically had watched the world as it is, never worked with others as a co-researcher to actually test solutions.

All of us will continue to write and speak about what we each learned. Here, I wanted to offer some initial ideas, ¡Ahas! , and prior research that I've personally been thinking about in conversation with literally hundreds of people featured or mentioned on this website. (You'll see ¡Aha! written throughout this website. It means a moment when we figured out something useful about improving communications in education.)

This first article shares some of my own ¡Ahas! on the project and cites some research that for me undergirded some of this work. It's called "It Takes a Network to Raise a Child." Click below to read it.

File:PollockIt Takes a NetworkJuly2012finalforpublication.pdf