Group items tagged

This webpage from the US Department of Education describes how Communities of Practice can improve education.

SUMMARY: The DOE gets behind CoPs as potential answer for achievement gap and underperforming teachers and leaders. Money, time, and resources were thrown at this initiative to see if online CoPs could become the missing link in the instructional shortcomings. Citing examples of success, one is drawn and intrigued to look further at the project as we are now 2 years later.

Finding and researching CoP sites I came across the Department of Education's answer on the Communities of Practice within education. The Department of Education has added the communities of practice within an initiative called the Investing in Innovation along with a series of other initiatives.

This blog post (linked to the book, Digital Habitats) discusses creating ones "personal technology configuration," which is a topic we'll be covering later in the semester. The author describes the tools in his "PTC" that he uses to "close triangles" (aka- network individuals to one another; Skype, LinkedIn), share information (blogs, Twitter), and curate information (tagging). Personal identity on the web is an important aspect of developing PLNs and CoPs.

I like how he has coined the phrase "network weaving practices", and also shows how he "weaves" in and out of other networks by using three different PLN configurations: closed triangles, sharing information, and curating resources.

I've never heard of this before with that term. I know it because of the general idea. I think it it great to weave our thoughts and information together with other professional. Teachers love to use materials and ideas from other and this would help make it easier to collaborate with them.

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.

Discusses the cost effectiveness of using social media in the classroom and the value of providing real world experiences for students. Emphasizes how collaboration skills are utilized and developed by students. An intersting point that is made is educating students on how to use social media as a tool, not a distraction.

This site dicates how facebook, twitter, and youtube were all used as social media for a school platform. While it does not make any strong conclusions it does indicate that it was positive, and how they made it so.

This pages provides ten links that are basically guides for creating effective PLNs. I was going to post them individually, but thought it was more effective to post them here together. As I browsed them - I saw some pretty cool ideas.

I truly enjoyed reading this page. The guides were short but very helpful. The comment about being a beacon of light was spot on. How often do people take, giving nothing back in return. The whole foundation of a personal learning network is to give and receive. Being an active member also means to help out those who are new to the community. There have been many times when I have struggled with a new concept or application and I know someone in one of my classes knew how to help but chose not to. This is a huge strength of a PLN, helping one another and sharing information. I think introducing elementary students to the concept of a PLN would be useful not only now but in their futures. Learning how to network is a 21st century skill that everyone must know how to engage in.

Authors discuss advantages of personal learning environments in facilitating collaboration and fostering learner control. PLEs are facilitated by technology, networking, and self-regulation by learners. Open network learning environments from instructors allow PLEs to form. Focus of PLE is not information consumption, but information creation and participation. Authors relate PLE and ONLE to the theory of connectivism and discuss various applications and limitations.

Fantastic quote: "Educators perceive the instructional value of integrating Web 2.0 tools include autonomy, diversity, openness, and connectedness (van Harmelen, 2006); yet, they find multiple technologies daunting, which may affect their attitudes toward online learning. The integration of multiple Web 2.0 tools has created frustration among educators and students because they lack knowledge of the tools (Lee, Miller, & Newnham, 2008), difficulty learn- ing different tools (Weller, 2007), conducting multiple authentications (Suess & Morooney, 2009), visiting multiple sites for different tools, etc. This phenomenon results from a lack of understanding of the social networking learning paradigm and inappropriate integration." This article describes the role of Personalized Learning Environments (PLEs) and how Open Network Learning Environments (ONLEs) are instrumental for creating a PLE. The authors indicate that connectivism is a key underlying principle for developing such a PLE--seeking connections to learners and sources of information. They cite Siemens ("the pipe is more important than the content in the pipe"), which surprised me, as I read that comment from Siemens as hyperbolic. Practical advice for creating your own PLE are also incorporated, as well as examples of how to work and learn within a PLE. The authors suggest that PLEs (operating through ONLEs) disrupt LMSs in the same way that technology disrupts learning in general. Interesting analogy.

This is one article in a series geared toward teacher librarians. This article is short and deals with both the "why" and "hows" to PLEs. (Although the term Personal Learning Environment is used instead of PLN, I felt it could still be helpful.) The article sets up the need for PLEs by recognizing the vast amount of information available to us today. It follows by breaking down Personal, Learning, and Environment in a concise form. The second half of the article focuses on the "hows." I have included the reference only because I had some difficulty retrieving some of my previously bookmarked pages from Ebscohost. "Personal Learning Environments in the Learning Commons. By: LOERTSCHER, DAVID V., KOECHLIN, CAROL, Teacher Librarian, 14811782, Dec2011, Vol. 39, Issue 2"

This research paper looks into success factors for communities of practice. Although the "success factors" portion of the article may fit better with future "how-to" assignments, I found the breakdown of CoPs helpful. Retna covers the basic idea that adults learn from day to day experiences, not just activities specifically designed for learning. Knowledge transfer is explained with emphasis on what it looks like in organizations. The paper goes on the account for CoPs in a multi-national company based out of Singapore. The findings are explained in the three components domain, community, and practice. The key success factors are identified as leadership, culture, and individual motivation to learn. 

First thing that caught my attention was, "An employee picks up the most relevant know-how in an organisation from day-to-day activities and by watching and talking with other employees." This absolutely defines what a community of practice is. Professional development is a great way to learn, but many of us learn best by seeing a theory, action, or idea in practice. Communities of practice connect people who have similar interests, providing them with a wide range of resources to draw upon. Motivation is also a major part to making a CoP a success. Once a member, one must stay active. Having a responsible leader helps to maintain motivation and organization of the community. I especially appreciated the emphasis on informal CoP. Members are there because they want to better themselves and periodically the leader may provide a reward however I believe knowledge is reward enough. Great paper!

I like how this article talks about knowledge is best understood as a "habitus". This habitus is everything that a person does that helps them acquire knowledge. This includes their activities and life experiences.

This article provides a concise look at personal learning networks in education. Benefits and reasons for educators and students to utilize are outlined.

This guide provided the benefits to PLNs, and both teachers and students can use PLNs effectively. The benefits outlined were, student preparedness, engaging, students have to take ownership of learning, individualized instruction, problem-solving skills, safety, and saves time and money. Ways teachers can use PLNs are for resource allocation, collaboration, and help. Students can use PLNs to find credible information through RSS feeds, share blog postings, about reflections and offer feedback for improvement.

This post is light on theory, but does a nice job explaining the whats, whys and hows of PLNs

This article is actually an introduction to a course offered by the University of Manitoba. My favorite part of this article is the diagram "that shows how the different elements and various technologies are linked together." However, throughout the article it offers various links that I also found interesting.

This article is written by Stephen Downes. In this article he discusses the online course that he created called Connectivism and Connective Knowledge. This course focuses on one of the more recent trends to emerge, connectivism. The visual map in the article shows how different elements and technologies all link together.

I saw Downe's article/work referenced on a few other sites, so this ties up a few things for me. However, the visual map has far too much going on for my brain to focus. Seriously- that thing is wild.

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.

Tony Bates (my fav edtech guy) discusses connectivism and how it applies to teaching and online learning. Another great read. Anything by Tony Bates is quite amazing! EDTECH543 Connectivism

My struggle with pedagogies such as the nurturing approach is that I am torn between teaching my students according to the way the world is and the way the world should be. In the former, I believe my students are academically and emotionally prepared to learn in any environment. In the latter, I worry that my students won't be able to cope and compete in the real world. When I worked with at-risk youth, many of them fell behind when they started fourth grade after the "class size reduction subsidies" stopped, and they were put in classes with 50% more students. They were no longer able to get the specialized attention and they were not prepared for it.

One of the aspects that Bates talks about in regards to connectivism is that "There is no need for formal institutions to support this kind of learning, especially since such learning often depends heavily on social media readily available to all participants." I found this statement to be a bit rogue as he tries to state that learning will automatically occur through the use of social media. In identifying how connectivism works, there is still a need to help define the learning for students so that they are provided with the proper structure of information, sources, and how to identify good information. I would love to think that all students inherently want to learn, but truly think that students also need to be taught how to learn through this medium. Not all learning will occur naturally.

This is a pretty simple explanation of connectivism. Basically it is about adding nodes to your PLN which connects you to another resource.

Usually when I see anything WIki that has to do with research I have the initial tendency to try to stay far away because in my undergrad years I was constantly reminded to pursue peer reviewed articles. What I really appreciate about this resource is how simple and basic it is on Connectivism. This wikispace provides all the "nuts and bolts" of Connectivism and is a great starting point for digging deeper into understanding its theory. Great find!

"Connectivism is a learning theory promoted by Stephen Downes and George Siemens." Learning occurs with connections in networks. This article believes that with connectivism we can move to a new age of learning. Learning can be more collaborative and global. With connectivism we see the use of networks with nodes and connections to elaborate on our learning.

Have you tried Mystery Skype yet? @PaulSolarz has great how-to resources @chadsmtty http://t.co/vABJiaEDEI #lusded #mysteryskype #edtechchat - Cinnamon Johnsrud (@cbjohnsrud) March 13, 2015

I love how this blog give specific examples of how to integrate spreadsheets into the classroom. Links are included for lesson plan outlines as well.

In this study, the role of a PLN using Twitter in a teacher preparation program. Teachers who were already using Twitter found that the power of Twitter as a PLN came not from the sharing of resources, but from the collaboration and conversations of other educators. Many new teachers were initially hesitant to use Twitter as a PLN, but with virtual mentors and an explanation as to the power of a PLN, new educators were more likely to use it as a powerful tool to develop their teaching practice.

I found this study particularly interesting as recently read a blog post by Etienne and Bev Wenger about whether or not colleges are utilizing the ideas of community of practice in their teacher prep programs. The findings of the study are not particularly surprising, teachers are hesitant to use Twitter but find the collaboration worthwhile. Both control groups were graduate students, I would be interested to find out if this is being implemented in any capacity at the undergrad level.

This study discusses the concept of using PLNs during teacher preparation programs. It discusses how newer teachers are more hesitant to use social media like Twitter and do not understand how valuable the tool can be. The studies findings emphasizes how PLNs promote professional development and allow for instant feedback through conversations and collaboration. The study also discusses how some teachers are hesitant at first, which I think is common thread for new and veteran teachers.

A short, engaging YouTube video on defining Personal Learning Networks.

I really enjoy the simplicity of this video while at the same time the depth of understanding it gives in such a brief period of time. For me this video really drives home the effectiveness technology can have in presenting potentially overwhelming information in a very easy to understand manner.

In my opinion, the key words of this video are "what", because you choose what to share, "where" and "when" to do it. It is brief but powerful. Thanks Melodie for sharing it!