Transatlantic Online Community of Practice

Global citizenship and an international orientation are high on the agenda in higher education both in Europe and in the USA. The realization of ambitions in this sphere is often problematic since student and staff exchange is a costly and time consuming affair. In this paper we will explore to what extent the use of technology may facilitate this process and what the added value is. To that end we will demonstrate how a university in the Netherlands and a university in the United States began a partnership in the area of teacher education. Through the use of technology, faculty and student teachers in the Netherlands and the USA socialize and collaborate on the secure educational platform Myschoolsnetwork.com. We will focus on the relationship between the social and the professional, the formal and the informal. We will demonstrate how parts of the US and NL curricula were synchronized and how students on both sides of the Atlantic uploaded lesson plans, webquests and classroom dilemmas . We will discuss why and how we began our partnership and provide detailed instructions on how to achieve success in the development in a transatlantic partnership. and explore what factors determine success or failure. In the conclusion plans for the future will be described.