Sustainability of eLearning clusters

On Friday, Jan Collier (CoroNet), Janet Ackhurst (Baylink), Carolyn Bennett (FarNet) and Sue Winters (eP Mentor) met to discuss our presentation on sustainability of eLearning clusters, and what factors were critical in ensuring clusters survived beyond projects and project funding.

These were a few of the things we came up with:

• Context - where has the cluster come from. (Whakapapa of the cluster)
  
• Relationships - between principals at the various schools. Need to see the cluster as being beneficial for their school. The Cluster has value for each school. Principals Collaborate and co-operate.
• Relationships - between ePrincipal and Principals; between ePrincipal and staff at each school.
• Collaboration and co-operation between staff across the cluster
• Cluster vision - lead by the principals. This gives the cluster status within each school.
• Commitment by each school to the cluster vision.
  
• Someone to drive the cluster and the cluster vision - ePrincipal/cluster leader.
• Cluster leader seen as an extension of each schools SMT.
• Funding - from MoE and from each school. Need to have a sustainable funding model. This has ramifications for the size of clusters. Optimal size seen as 10 to 12 schools in a cluster.
• Leadership - the cluster needs strong leadership from principals - principals take ownership of the cluster and what happens in it.

I will be adding to this as I refer to my notes for the day.