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This article focuses on how to keep kids safe in a hyper-connected world.

A free service for your home that lets you control the websites that are accessible on all Internet-connected devices on your network. Education and Enterprise versions also commercially available.

List of several organizations that facilitate cross-cultural interaction & global classroom projects as learning opportunities. They offer areas for you to connect and collaborate with other educators and students.

Explaining the many facets of learning through connectivism and how the internet has connected us even more.

This book was written by Stephen Downes. Although it is very lengthy, there are many visual representations of connectivity and portions of the book that are very informative. It is broken into chapters that stand independently allowing the reader to pick and choose what they need information on.

Connectivism by Stephen Downes, anything you want to know about connectivism in this 600+ page pdf.

This article was originally published in the Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education. It reviews three resources Edmodo, The Educator's PLN and Classroom 2.0. The article begins by describing what a PLN is and talks about the social media connections and the tools that are used to aggregate all the information. It also discusses some of the difficulties associated with PLN's including information overload, figuring out the social norms and learning to use the tools. The article goes on to describe and compare the three PLN platforms. The article even highlights the types of topics that are discussed on PLN's.

The authors examine how professional learning programs can benefit from including communities of practice. When approached from a connectivist perspective, teachers can create their own networks of practice that challenge more traditional methods of professional development offerings at universities and school districts. The theory of communities of practice learning demonstrates the changing participant's role, as each person becomes an active contributor using his/her own teaching practice in context within socially networked modalities. The changing role of the student creates a new way of approaching professional learning. Challenges include constraints of using online courses that have a definite beginning and end to the interactions. The authors point out that a key to redesigning online courses is to encourage participants to develop their own networks of practice that extend beyond the confines of the course structure and timeline.

This article examines a study done in New Zealand on 15 teachers online professional learning as part of a graduate ICT program. It attempts to draw connections between their PLN's and two learning theories. The two learning theories examined are Social Constructivist theory and the Communities of Practice Social Theory. The article describes how teachers create learning networks through their online and offline interactions with peers. The article is scholarly in nature and focuses very much on the research.

This is a great post that makes the connection between social learning theories and cooperative learning. The author asserts that using connectivism teachers can motivate their students. I particularly liked how the focus was primarily on mathematics classrooms.

This article is a guest post by a student who describes her PLN. It is an interesting self reflection about how this student realized she had a PLN without ever actively creating it. The article goes on to discuss how she developed her PLN and the major pieces that are in it.

I love that you included a student's perspective on PLN. I particularly liked her perspective on Internet Safety. My favorite quote is one we should all remember, "Common sense is a valuable thing".

Bryan, I really appreciate this article. Maybe because I can identify with Conner Wood's journey into blogging and PLNs. His revelation of a group of people he can trust thousands of miles apart connected by the Internet and his desire to meet them resonates with me. Many times I have wanted to meet my own cohorts. Wood's reflection on the quality of his selection of progressive educators is not lost on me either. His desire to opening your PLN to a variety of fields mirrors my own. "One can have a network of the top people in one's own field, but if one cannot talk to those people about anything else, what is the point?" Pinging your PLN for the "personal" as well as "learning" seems a recurring theme.

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.

The author of this video, George Siemens, explains how networks enable us to stay current in our field and in society as well. He goes on to explain how the more connections that are made within the network, the stronger the network becomes.

This is another resource that requires you to log into Albertson's Library using your MyBoiseState credentials. This article's focus is on middle school teachers and looks at the MSP2 Math and Science Pathways project. The project was focused on providing connected online experiences for math and science through the use of technology. It discusses how they used Ning and Wikis for collaboration and also presents some of the findings from the MSP2 project.

The author discusses what happened when he created a PLN during the summer. He focuses on the qualitative data he collected from participants. He describes the two many barriers most participants shared which were a limited amount of time to develop and learn from their PLN's and also the information overload associated with connecting your PLN to social media. He also describes how the participants used the different tools.

As someone that tries to read everything in my own PLN, I appreciate the authors recommendations on ways to not become overwhelmed. Starting out by only using one or two tools and setting aside a few minutes every couple days is great advice.

This blogger explains in his opinion the difference between a PLN and CoP. He admits that they are both so similar, but explains a couple of way they differ. PLN's can be more random, where of CoPs are not. In other words in PLN's people can connect via the web at random or different times to learn something where in CoP's meetings are more deliberate and subject focused. Also, another difference is that PLN are extremely flexible and loose where CoP's have a shared domain.

As is the case with many academic theroists, I admit that I find Siemens (the co-ideological leader of the connectivist movement) much more engaging to listen to than to try read. I didn't think I would stay with this for the full hour, but I did. I love the citation of the TS Eliot quote "Hell is a place where nothing connects" and its discussion here relative to the cognitive overload that many modern day learners are experiencing (i.e., too many resources, too difficult to assess what is worthy and what is crap). Highly recommended.

You will need to use your BSU information to access this pdf article by Christine Muller. This is a pretty dry article that attempts to make the connection between the need for community and mathematics. The author states, "Despite a common belief that mathematical practitioners prefer isolation and self-study, we observe that they are highly collaborative and active in their community. Mathematical collaborations are essential for any stage of mathematical practice". The author states the need to further analyze the need(s) for web-based community tools, such as discussion spaces that facilitate international online collaboration on the Web. This article is a starting point of a great discussion but needs much more elaboration.

You will need to use your BSU information to access this scholarly article. This article explores the foundation to the concept of Connectivism. Connectivism is basically how the various connections are created, formed and strengthened in education and in all types of learning.