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Great article about integration of tech for early childhood educators

How young is too young for technology? Are children ages three through sixto young to use technology? What forms of technology are better than others for young children?

An educator's blog that writes about how to use technology in the early childhood classroom - great ideas to use with younger children.

Great site for early childhood students learning English. Gives picture and audio and an opportunity to practice the skills.

Authors present communities of practice (CoP) as groups with a common desire for change, as providing opportunities for collaboration and reflection, and as catalysts for development of societal products and tools. They note that CoP transcend traditional barriers/demographics and reach groups formed by individual selection. CoP, while also focused on collaboration and dialogue as well as the development desired outcomes, are more open to sharing with the broader community than other collaborative models. Discussion of use of CoP in context of early childhood intervention.

In January 2010, the Department offered a program of free, online conferences to support teacher professional learning. The program of web conferences covered the domains of Literacy, Maths, Science and ICT

George Siemens gives a TED Talk on connections. Education is shutting down connections. "Connected learning is transparent learning." The video is about 20 minutes, but worth watching. He has some fascinating examples from his childhood to when he was exposed to more in the world.

This research effort developed by Barbara F. Hartigan, Ed.D. and Marialice B.F.X. Curran, Ph.D at University of Saint Joseph that looks at connectivism in the context of using social media as a mentorship program for pre-service teachers. It is based off the researchers witnessing teachers on Twitter who engage in the Twitter chat #kinderchat mentoring a first year kindergarten teacher through their weekly chats. This developed into a research project where they embedded social media into the program for 19 pre-service teachers. They used mostly Twitter, Skype, and blogging and found that all of the participants learn from and value learning and teaching ideas and methodology obtained from their social media interactions. They note that next steps would be to follow those educators into their classrooms to see their continued development using social media.