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Many teachers go to school each day, teach their students and leave. If they're struggling with how to teach a lesson that will engage their students, they might ask for advice from the teacher down the hall, but a lot of times, they struggle alone.  That's not the case for educators who have built a network of people who share resources, advice and techniques, whether they call it a personal learning network or something else. Here's why educators should start a personal learning network, or PLN.

"The paper argues that although social networking media increase the potential range and scope for emergent learning exponentially, considerable effort is required to ensure an effective balance between openness and constraint.  It is possible to manage the relationship between prescriptive and emergent learning, both of which need to be part of an integrated learning ecology."

Implicit learning of words via context versus explicit- learning a list of words and definitions. each creates different paths in the brain. "Readers identified as "excellent" did not demonstrate notable differences in brain function between the implicit and explicit approaches, but readers considered "average" showed significantly less efficient neural networks when the pseudowords were learned by the implicit method."

KSC Faculty at Institute on Global Learning This summer, a team of Keene State faculty members from all three academic schools will participate in "Shared Futures: General Education for a Global Century," an institute sponsored by the American Association of Colleges and Universities to help faculty integrate global perspectives across the curriculum. The institute will be held in Ellicott City, Md., from July 31 to August 5, and will draw faculty from 32 colleges and universities. During the fall 2011 semester, the core Keene State team will draw in faculty and staff from across campus to implement the goals and strategies developed at the institute. By building a network of educators dedicated to this integrative work, Shared Futures facilitates curricular change and faculty development on campuses nationwide. Through an online social network, the initiative hopes to create new connections between educators and new opportunities for partnership and learning. Keene State faculty members attending the institute include professors Charles Weed (political science), Margaret Henning (health sciences), Patricia Pedroza (women's and gender studies), and Rich Blatchly (chemistry). For more information, contact Prof. Weed at cweed@keene.edu or visit the Shared Futures page.

from news and events

Mike's site at WSUV for blended and networked learning resources

Where Levine gets it wrong is to assume that this shift is being driven by the demand of digital natives for new methods of teaching and learning. Levine writes that, "Today's traditional undergraduates, aged 18 to 25, are digital natives. They grew up in a world of computers, Internet, cell phones, MP3 players, and social networking." I recommend that Arthur Levine, and all of you, download (buy, whatever) a copy of Clay Shirky's new book Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. Shirky talks about the fundamental_attribution_error, the tendency to explain behaviors as the result of character as opposed to the opportunity structure.

The Social Web is transforming the way students interact with others, and is challenging traditional pedagogies, values and practices. An analysis of students' uses of social networking tools (e.g. Facebook, Myspace) and video/photo sharing sites (e.g. YouTube, Flickr) reveals the emergence of collective digital literacies. These include filtering content, new textual and visual literacies, managing multiple digital identities, representing self in cyberspace and engaging in new modes of interaction.

 his is fast becoming one of my favorite uses of Twitter. Combined with Google collaborative docs, Twitter becomes a powerful tool. Start your project in Google docs, spreadsheet or presentation and then Tweet a request to your followers for help

There is something in the air, and it is nothing less than the digital artifacts of over one billion people and computers networked together collectively producing over 2,000 gigabytes of new information per second. While most of our classrooms were built under the assumption that information is scarce and hard to find, nearly the entire body of human knowledge now flows through and around these rooms in one form or another, ready to be accessed by laptops, cellphones, and iPods. Classrooms built to re-enforce the top-down authoritative knowledge of the teacher are now enveloped by a cloud of ubiquitous digital information where knowledge is made, not found, and authority is continuously negotiated through discussion and participation.

Dave Cormier outlines success in a MOOC but this applies to just about any learning opportunity: Orient, Declare, Network, Cluster,Focus

"Social media is transforming our culture, opening new ways to connect with others and promoting the growth of communities of interest. Higher education is already feeling the impact of social media, and I think we're just at the beginning of that process. 9thPeriod offers a way for the University to leverage social media for pedagogical ends. I'm happy that the Learning Technologies Grant program has funded this opportunity to explore how social media can help support UGA's mission."

The thing I want to avoid is for people to walk away from this presentation with the view that if work sucks, you can just put the lipstick of points and badges and completion bars and leaderboards on and suddenly make work exciting. we can learn a number of things from games:

k-12 PLN between 2 HS.