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Blog author Steve Wheeler summarizes several writings on connectivism in this blog post. He highlights the connectivist idea that learning occurs outside the individual via social networks and PLNs. He also points to the shift in knowledge acquisition from one of "knowing information (aka memorization)" to "knowing how to locate information." He suggests it's vital that students learn to develop their own networks and personalized learning tools.

I enjoyed the quote from Siemens where he says that students need to find a method to develop their own learning tools, environment, and communities to store their knowledge. As educators, it is more important for us to guide students to find the information they require. Then coach them as to how they can store and display the knowledge they have acquired.

I found his "nutshell" comment about how connectivism argues it's more important to know where to find knowledge than it is to internalise it to be very helpful.

Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials. Elementary school PowerPoint exercises ... typically consist of 10 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation of three to six slides - a total of perhaps 80 words (15 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work.

Skype Blog that has several success stories of using Skype in the classroom. Have a U.S. Senator speak in class over Skype, talk with mt climbers on Everest, special guest on Skype Classroom.

This is actually a blog that shows what Kim Cofino has been able to do internationally with student collaborations and student- produced projects that involve social media or other web 2.0 tools.

Second and third graders blogging, with global collaboration built in.

This open "back end" on KidBlog shows how growth over time is readily apparent in student blogging. Writing takes place fairly frequently, for a variety of purposes and audiences. Comments come from around the world.

"Muzy is a new kind of blog for your creative side!" I just found this wonderful site the other day ... it reminds me of Tumblr but allows you to post to your Muzy blog using unique and creative apps. User-friendly, fun, social, and mobile. You can access it on-line or through a mobile device.

I selected this article because I was looking for "newer" articles. Teresa Byington defined Communities of Practice in a way that resonated with me, addressing the disconnect that often exists between the special education and the content area teachers. Additionally, she underscores the benefits of collaboration between educators. The DCP explanation also resonated with me. The latter part ventures into "how to" and why for using blogging to create your CoP. Since I still do not care for blogging, I needed the extra explanation of the benefits.

This session from the 2013 ISTE Conference shows how "social media like Skype, Twitter and having students write their own blogs can be used to get in contact with students and teachers from other parts of the world."

Great article. It probably is a little too much on the practical side for the first assignment but the examples are great and really useful.

I think that having students blog can be a great tool in allowing them to express what they've learned and to connect them to others around the world. Thanks for contributing the paper. I would agree with Richard Krause that it does seem more about application than theory.

This blog post was written by the creator of the SAMR Model, Dr. Ruben Puentedura. In it he looks at the SAMR Model in relation to Blooms Taxonomy and draws parallels between the two. He even gives some suggested web resources which address various levels in the SAMR/Blooms Model.

Two more of those "C" words- helping to discern between them. The argument here is that connectivism is new, thus the misspelled word suggestion every time I type it in, whereas Constructivism is the "old" term and connectivism brings in more social media use to let people be more connected. I'll have to book mark the other blog they mention so look for that to be posted soon.

Mark, I agree with your point, although my thought is that Siemens and others associated with the theory would not discount the importance of offline interaction (traditional social constructivism) but rather highlight the new opportunities to learn that until now where being ignored in formal educational settings.

This blog talks about online education specifically science in an online environment. The blog post attached here talks about connectivism vs. constructivism. The post runs through how both of these learning theories discuss how students learn. The blog then goes into his takes on constructivism and connectivism.

This is a blog by Bill Kerr. The blog is about the challenge of connectivism. The main premise of this blog walks through the challenges of actually connectivism can be proven as a learning theory. The final quote of this piece is, "Finally, connectivism misrepresents the current state of established alternative learning theories such as constructivism, behaviorism and cognitivism, so this basis for a new theory is also dubious."

This long-term project has students creating a blog that serves as their reading response journal for the year. For this assignment, students created a blog to replace their hardcopy notebooks. As students read various things in their English class, they use this one place to do all reading activities. Once they have finished posting, they then receive time to go and comment on other people's posts. This gives students a place to practice their writing skills with an authentic audience. As the year goes on and students get more comfortable with commenting, students could end up having rich conversations based on each other's writing. I like this because it is easy to set up and use for the course of the year. This can be applied to almost any subject area. Even a math teacher could use something like this for students to summarize their learning and bounce ideas off of their peers. The functionality and utility of this project make it a must-have for educators of all subject areas.

This project has students creating a blog account for a character in a Shakespeare play and updating it throughout the unit. Students each get assigned a character and have to create a blogging platform for their character. They use this site for all of their assignments during their unit. They need to have a blog post for every scene their character is in and comment on other scenes that their character isn't in. They also need to memorize one passage and record themselves saying it on their blog. I like this as an organizational tool for the assignments over a unit. It gives students a good way to interact with each other and practice their writing while they deepen their understanding of Shakespeare. This project is great because it can be applied to any reading that is being done in a class over a long period of time. A Shakespeare play is read every year in high school in my district and this is something I would want to use in my English class to support that.

This blog post outlines a number of resources on finding free to use images.

Blogger makes blogging accessible and easy. It also connects bloggers with a community of other bloggers across many areas. I have used Blogger in my personal/professional life for many years. It has been slowly improving over that time and the new blogs are capable of a lot.