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This article addresses the many challenges of setting up a Personal Learning Environment. The article also discusses the many benefits and various modes of collaboration and online discussion forums.

This article is about how learning management systems can be set up to encourage the development of Personal Learning Environments and connectivist learning. Currently many LMS are not developing students who are reaching their potential in creativity and autonomous learning. The large limiting factor in this include lack of student or even instructor knowledge of tools within an LMS. This is creating students who are dependent on the resources available within their LMS rather than capable of finding their own resources to guide their learning. When designing an online course it is crucial that students have the opportunity to discuss their learning and to share resources among each other.

This article explains the differences between behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, and connectivism. The author makes the argument that behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism all have limitations to learning in the digital world. The author argues that connectivism is a beneficial learning model, especially in the digital era.

his article points out how the rapid increase of technology in our lives is changing how we need to educate. A few areas it points to in supporting this argument is the trend that knowledge is often not following a linear path, how the half life of knowledge is becoming shorter and shorter and how the capacity to learn more outweighs the amount of knowledge currently known. Connectivism becomes important when facing these challenges because it allows us to have access to a much broader range of knowledge than we would otherwise. Often times in our world today the collective knowledge of many individuals is more valuable than the sole knowledge of a single expert.

This article goes over the differences between connectivism, cognitivism and behaviorism. Society is changing and how we interact with people has changed.

Purpose of this paper is to survey current & best practices in the integration of technology into ESL adult classes.

This website gives teachers free access to lesson plans and videos that connect to different content areas. The lessons vary from online or offline work and they often provide way to integrate current events into any classroom.

This site is a great blog with up to date websites for educational technology integration and current trends and issues.

AAA Math features a comprehensive set of interactive arithmetic lessons. Unlimited practice is available on each topic which allows thorough mastery of the concepts. A wide range of lessons (Kindergarten through Eighth grade level) enables learning or review to occur at each individual's current level. The AAAMath.com site contains thousands of pages of Math Lessons.

This site provides a list of current Internet projects going on between schools around the world. Search by grade level and topic to find an existing project to join or post your own to find partner schools. (Week 3, Link 2 for EdTech541)

Abstract Distance education as a primary means of instruction is expanding significantly at the college and university level. Simultaneously, the growth of social networking sites (SNS) including Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace is also rising among today's college students. An increasing number of higher education instructors are beginning to combine distance education delivery with SNSs. However, there is currently little research detailing the educational benefits associated with the use of SNSs. Non-commercial, education-based SNSs, such as Ning in Education, have been recently shown to build communities of practice and facilitate social presence for students enrolled in distance education courses. In order to evaluate the largely unexplored educational benefits of SNSs, we surveyed graduate students enrolled in distance education courses using Ning in Education, an education-based SNS, based on their attitudes toward SNSs as productive online tools for teaching and learning. The results of our study suggest that education-based SNSs can be used most effectively in distance education courses as a technological tool for improved online communications among students in higher distance education courses.

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This article is actually a blog on connetivism. THe author of this post focuses on "sensemaking". He defines it as, Sensemaking is an activity that individuals engage in daily in response to uncertainty, complex topics, or in changing settings. Sensemaking is not about truth or right from wrong, bu rather about making information make sense.

Here is a great blog site from George Siemens where he posts on various topics in education and their relativity to connectivism. The blog has not been updated in some time, but there is still a lot of great info on the site.

This website page is the perfect summary of what Connectivism is and what it really represents. Stephen Downes states, "Learning is the creation and removal of connections between the entities, or the adjustment of the strengths of those connections. " This is probably the best resource I have found for truly understanding what Connectivism really is.

I bookmarked this as an extra site. It does not appear to be currently updated, but is George Siemens' personal website. There is a good link to a PDF of his book, Knowing Knowledge (2006).

The site didn't seem all that informative, but the links to the PDF books make up for what the page is lacking. These two books should provide some good reference materials.

This resource is an image that shows the comparison between professional development for teachers in the past and currently through the use of profession learning networks.

I love this as I am a very visual learner. A great graphic - focus on the support, learn, engage and measure, and as a teacher who works in an international school the concept of PD is truly global. Excellent. Thanks Alexis -PLN buddy.

Solid graphic and one that actually focuses on teachers. A lot of the resources I found used businesses or government bodies as examples, but this is obviously more pertinent. Nice find.

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."

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.

The author takes a quick look at 5 of the best online tools for creating infographics: Visme, Canva, Easel.ly, Piktochart, and Infogr.am. All of these tools are evolving quickly, and this is just a snapshot of their current capabilities.

This is the U.S. national education technology plan. 101 pages with lengthy bibliography after each section. Currently there is no Congress mandated plan scheduled so this plan will be relevant for awhile. Office of Educational Technology, U.S Department of Education (2016). Future ready learning: Reimaging the role of technology in education. Retrieved from http://tech.ed.gov/files/2015/12/NETP16.pdf

Teach your students to listen with the power of public radio! Free lessons and engaging real world stories for your classroom.

NBC Learn is the educational arm of NBC News dedicated to providing resources for students, teachers and lifelong learners. The online resources NBC Learn has created for the education community leverages nearly 80 years of historic news coverage, documentary materials and current news broadcasts. Includes videos and lesson plans.