Group items tagged

This article examines the nature of learning communities constructed among a diverse group of adult learners in an online graduate-level 16 week instructional design course. Researchers analyzed course artifacts, survey responses, online profiles and project evaluations to explore communities formed in an online setting that involves 21 international participants. Data was collected through observing recorded audio webcasts and chat discussions, and analysis of student profiles, artifacts, survey responses, and course evaluations. The authors found evidence of community building without significant differences associated with race, culture, or gender. Instead, evidence for community building was more dependent on active participation, forming of shared identify, and the establishment of social network. The course design allowed individuals to work and communicate collaboratively. The authors admit that the study is narrow in scope with a small number of participants, making it unreliable for wider contexts.

The authors conducted a study of two groups of students (ages 13-17) with two mentors in a teacher education program at Brigham Young University. The study examined how interaction within the two study groups contributed to social construction of shared knowledge. Group A had social interactions previous to the six-week online project, while group B had no previous social interactions. The researchers examined a variety of data including email exchanges, chat room transcripts, electronic logs, and discussion board entries. The conclusions suggested the effectiveness of an online mentor whose role helps establish social interaction, a supportive climate for the exploration of ideas, consensual decision-making, and open discussion. The strength of the study involves using two groups for comparison, as well as a variety of authentic data resources. Limitations include whether results can be generalized and limited ability to analyze students' prior social interactions as factors in the results.

In Dominique Chargois's Spanish III classes, students interact with native Spanish speakers on Livemocha, a social network for learners of foreign languages. Chargois has used Livemocha Active Spanish as a supplemental learning tool in all of her Spanish III sections in order to engage students and inspire them to learn ad so they could work at their own pace. It also helps expand students' horizons by 'chatting' with individuals who live outside the U.S.

I found this valuable for those of us who are trying to implement their own PLNs from the ground up. They have compiled a Google Doc with all of the Twitter chats and hashtags to use to be involved in the conversations of like-minded educators. You can join the conversation now by checking out this document and using the appropriate hashtags http://tinyurl.com/29cn2uc You can also Tweet right now to #Itnchat each Thursday to advice on how to use Twitter as your own personal PLN starting point.

Rosetta Stone Shared Talk allows for real-time online chat with Spanish speakers from around the world.

Trying to figure out this Diigo thing... This is a website by a guy named Dan Meyer who writes on math education. In particular, I'd recommend checking out his "Three Acts" posts.

Dan is an amazing individual! I had the pleasure of meeting him last April. We had a good chat and he seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say.

Personal Learning Network for educators in action. Interesting example of a living, breathing learning network in use today by teachers from the United States to Sri Lanka and Greece, 13,576 members strong.

A great collection of blogs, videos, resource (including an alphabetical list of Twitter Hashtags) for education.

This is a great PLN for educators. I found videos and blog postings that were extremely interesting. What a cool resource!

Summary: This is a site that provides a community of practice startup kit. This site walks through with detail the process of starting a community of practice. The visuals are great, and there is a ton of valuable resources provided. The page is a bit old, "2000" but much of the information is still pertinent today.

Todd - What an AWESOME find. I am just not sure just how current all the information is. Many times the article references the "Winding Down" of CoPs, mainly because this seems to be more of a corporate-type CoP model. As educators come and go from a CoP, I am not convinced it would wind down. Also, this article references the value of the telephone and Convergence since 2000 has increased the values of Podcasts, SKYPE, Google Hangouts, blogs, glogs, Facebook, Twitter, and online chat as nearly replacing the phone. The guidelines posted in the article have a great deal of value. The Venn diagram on page 9 and the indicators of a successful CoP on pp. 9-10 resonated with me. I will be interested to see how they mesh with our coursework.

Because we have librarians in our community.

PenPalNews allows people to create an anonymous pen pal relationship in order to obtain feedback from someone or just to chat. Students can get feedback on opinions or can complete research from other areas of the world.

This article focuses on helpful techniques anyone (including educators) can use with Google spreadsheets. Formulas, forms, chatting, and shortcuts are explained along with tutorials and resources.

Focusing on the use of Twitter in a PLN, a study was conducted involving seven educators. The results were encouraging as Twitter provided an excellent medium for personalizing their PLN and having immediate access. Although much of the article goes on to explain how Twitter works in a roundabout way, it does explain the merits of open and public forums for collaboration and discussion.

This article covers a small scale research project done to see how important the use of Twitter was within a personal learning network. It was interesting to see how impactful Twitter could be within a PLN.

I love how this article validates the effectiveness of Twitter in the building of one's PLN. I have engaged in numerous Twitter chats with like-minded educators and found great benefit in building my PLN. Thanks for linking a great article!

I saw a reference to MOOCs when I was researching so I wanted to dive deeper into MOOCs (massive open online courses). This article serves as a report card discussing the successes and needed improvements for MOOCs. MOOCs biggest successes seem to be the huge reach they have with their online presence. Millions of people enroll in the courses and top universities, such as Harvard and MIT, have MOOCs. However, some pitfalls are that less than 10% of people who enroll in MOOCs actually finish. The article gives ideas for improving MOOCs mostly based off the belief that online courses can be isolating and more collaboration with actual humans, via chats and videos, need to be included in MOOCs. I found this read interesting because the MOOCs are founded with the connectivism theory in mind, however many of this components that drive connectivsm and communities of practice are lacking.

Jake, I found a resource on MOOCs as well and while it was a positive presentation of them, it also noted some of the pitfalls. The fact that they draw mostly highly educated students, makes me wonder how accessible they are for all people. However, I know they are new and evolving, so it will be interesting to follow their development.

This article was extremely interesting! I was surprised to see the the high percentage of people who sign up for MOOCs and don't finish. I also strongly agree with the comment in the article, "people need people." Thanks for sharing!

This short journal article describes how one teacher in Louisiana uses Twitter to find and joing professional learning networks. She uses Twitter to collaborate with teachers on lessons. She also leads a weekly chat to discuss a variety of educational topics. In addition, the journal explains what Twitter is and how to use it for a complete beginner.

I appreciated the idea from this article that relationships started on Twitter can expand beyond Web 2.0: "Connections which begin online may lead to face-to-face meetings at conferences." Likewise, the river analogy helped me see how Twitter can be interpreted and integrated into an individual's personal learning network: "Consider a Tweet as an 'on-ramp' to deeper learning." Thanks for posting this link!