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According to the author, Wenger, a community of practice is distinguished by three features: domain, community, and practice. The domain is a shared interest. The community is the social part, including discussion and sharing. The practice is developing resources and collaborative tools. Example activities are provided along with social structures that are utilizing communities of practice.

Discusses Communities of Practice and their value to organizations and indicates that cultivating COP's is key to success for global knowledge. Focuses on the nature of knowledge and states that knowledge is dynamic and ever changing.

Brenda A. Dyck works with teachers to learn the newest technologies to apply in the classroom. In this article she lists many Web 2.0 tools that she has used in her professional development training sessions and describes why they are useful.

This article summarizes why schools need to move from individual learning for teachers to a systems approach to learning. Teachers should form PLCs to create interdependent connections as part of a larger group. Districts should treat their entire staff as one big PLC instead of isolating everyone into their own small groups.

The National Staff Development Council is now renamed to be Learning Forward. This company is dedicated to improving professional development for educators. They believe that by making teachers learners it will enhance the students' experience in the classroom. This article details the successes it has had in school districts.

This articles defines Connectivism is an emergent theory of learning relating to the importance of networks (connections) in learning for individuals and groups:

This book discusses emerging technologies in distance learning. One of the keys points covered in this book is the roll of social networking in distributing knowledge. This covers Moodle, wikis, and web 2.0 tools such as Facebook and twitter. This book is mainly theoretical in nature.

This book would be a great resource for many classrooms. I enjoyed looking at some of the parts to find out more. It is good to have many ideas to use in the classroom in case some of the ideas crash. This has so many to use which gives us many options.

Connections and communication are key with emerging technology, including social media and other teaching tools.

This study evaluated the CoPs in State Farm Insurance to study various variables and their impact on the effectivenss of CoPs. SOme of the varialbes include level of trust among members, connectedness, member committment, community leadership strength, perceived impact on job performance, and perceived community effetiveness.

What an excellent resource! 7 important things to know about PLE's? Why yes! This resource breaks down what they are, who started them/researched them, why they are significant, what is their future, their downfalls and their importance in education. This resource concisely explains PLE's and what educators need to know about them. The takeaway from this resource is that PLE's cause more reflection and deeper understanding, as well as develops student's information fluency to analyze the information presented on the internet.

In this scholarly article, Bessenyei discusses the current desire in education to decrease the alienation of traditional schools. He looks at connectivism and network theories as a way to decentralize learning into self-organizing networks. These networks allow information sharing to become more significant as students information sources are varied to include experts as well as other students from multiple institutions.

In this article the author discusses the importance of connectivism that is dependent upon learning in a web 2.0 platform. As the influence of the web has spread so to has the importance the ability to share and distribute information to people all over the world. The premise of this article is that as costs continue to soar in education the connectivism platform offers an alternative way to disseminate learning. The web is now no longer a medium for learning, it is the platform and center for personal learning. One final point that is made is the importance in educating students how to use the available online resources to construct learning for future use because as online resources and CoP's continue to be the primary sources for information it is important to understand how to use and identify these resources for continued learning.

Bessenyei takes an interesting look at the history of elearning as it relates to student learning requirements, societal norms and Connectivism today. The authors perspective on Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and the policital development of elearning provides the reader with a new lens to look at the variety of social media that is used today.

This is a training resource that I came across from a school district in Indiana. It focuses on how professional learning communities or communities of practice can avoid becoming a passing fad in educational reform. It gives three "big ideas" that educational CoPs need to focus on to truly be successful. They are: ensuring that students learn, creating a culture of collaboration, focusing on results by holding themselves accountable.

Thank you for sharing this. Just today, my school discussed starting PLC's and I feel that is important to focus on those three big ideas. I feel that this article makes us look closely at the questions and the answer to those questions before we begin creating networks and communities. Makes me think of the UbD-approach and how we should think about what the goals are and what we want our PLC's to do specifically before making them vent sessions amongst teachers.

This article presents an argument on PLNs and CoPs in the sector of public affairs education. It states that in order to strengthen PLNs and CoPs, emerging technologies must be used to accurately connect students with proper practitioners, which in turn---will enhance knowledge and present various new learning opportunities. This includes a major shift in practitioner delivery systems so that emerging technologies are adequately integrated.

This study shows a very specific CoP example, using geography teachers in New Zealand as the subject of research. In the introduction, the researcher states "mandating professional development services to several hired geography teachers is impractical...and needs to be voluntary rather than mandatory." This statement is consistent with CoPs having membership of like-individuals connecting because of their learning needs and wants. Furthermore, the study shows a positive result when connecting 'distant' people as a cost effective way to circumvent budgetary restraints for professional development.

Communities of Practice need to be voluntary and non-threatening in order for an individual to join. In this study, I like how they set up their Community of Practice so that the individual could join a topic or subject matter group that was relevant to their situation or needs. As teachers we are often placed in professional development training that has no relevance to the needs of our classroom. I also like how they set up a dialogue for the members of the group. Participants not only posted their own ideas but shared thoughts and ideas through discussion with others in the group. It seemed to be less intimidating because much of the dialogue took place online. One of the factors that impacted the participants was time. Just like educators in the U.S., the educators in this study found it difficult to find the time to fully participate in these Communities of Practice and some did not even finish the modules. As a result, dialogue toward the end of the module fizzled out and was less engaging for some participants. That is one of my concerns with Communities of Practice. Sometimes if one is not being forced to complete a project, it does not get completed. It takes a lot of discipline to be part of a Community of Practice and a willingness to be there for the other group members.

In this study from the University of Central Florida, the researcher focuses specifically on how classroom activities drive student learning towards the CoP model, most notably collaboration. The researcher uses a graduate public administration level class to conduct her study, which is important because all student participants share the same learning and degree outcome---essential to the effectiveness of CoPs. One finding this study presents is the concept of building 'friendship networks' in CoPs. The study shows that friendships were "greatly strengthened" throughout the course and there were no "weakly connected individuals" at the end of the semester (Napucu, 2012). Furthermore, in this study, emphasis is placed on the facilitator (in this case, the professor) of this CoP and how that facilitator structured the course to fulfill the learning needs of the students in the created CoP. *Note, you'll need to log in to Albertsons Library to read the article in full.

This is just a helpful PDF with using Voicethread in the classroom.

Council for Exceptional Children, (n.d.), Embedding technology in education for all learners: CEC's recommendations to the National Education Technology Plan. Retrieved from https://www.cec.sped.org/~/media/Files/Policy/Archives/Assistive%20Technology/CEC%20Recommendations%20to%20National%20Assistive%20Technology%20Plan.pdf

Article that includes an excellent description of universal design for learning. Alnahdi, G. (2014) Assistive technology in special education and the universal design for learning. The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology. 13 (2) Retrieved from http://www.tojet.net/articles/v13i2/1322.pdf