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Share rich voice messages with friends, family and the world. Add your voice to Facebook, Twitter and your blog. Broadcast from anywhere, anytime

Inlcudes 7 actual tools available online 1. Prezi 2. Animoto 3. Zoho 4. Empressr 5. ImageLoop 6.Google Docs 7.Slideshare

Here are 8 alternatives to giving a presentation with PowerPoint. As well as standard presentations, some of these tools create slideshows from sets of images. They are all free, or at least have a free option.

This article explains why communities of practice are so important for the business realm. In one statement it explained that companies have now figured out that "knowledge = power, so share and it multiplies". This idea is synonymous with connectivism and the idea that in order to gain more knowledge more connections must be made through sharing, collaborating, creating, etc. This article also made the distinction between tacit knowledge that is rooted in people's life experiences with explicit knowledge that is deliberately shared outside of people. This distinction also helped me to really see the reason why connectivism, PLNs and CoPs work so well together. You have a group of people, connected by common interests and goals, that are expanding upon their knowledge by sharing their own collective experiences and goals in effort to connect with others that can share insight, collaborate with and add to their ideas, solutions and questions.

Allee uses the term organizational intelligence to describe how CoPs are becoming more prevalent in the modern workforce. He talks about how he has consulted with various multinational companies to help them create CoPs and to get employees at various levels to share their expertise.

A mostly visual representation to explore connectivism as it occurs through an open learning system. Points brought up include learners making meaningful choices while exploring their personal interest in order to guide learning. And as participants engage in making connections, a natural result will be content development and eventually those more experienced students becoming mentors.

Great video that has a section about how our students are "different" than when we were in school. "They [Students] expect to learn from technology because that is what they are used to." As soon as ALL teachers realize and accept this fact, then we as teachers can be one step closer to helping our students achieve their FULL potential!

I like the idea of learners making meaningful choices. Anything that can guide students to make effective and relevant connections is a great resource. I also think teachers have a lot to learn about the way our students learn these days. The idea that students actually need to be a force in their own learning and that they expect instant gratification are concepts I have been seeing more frequently in my own classroom. Great resource!

Vyew allows users to meet, share, and collaborate on content in real-time including images, files, documents and videos and more.

Upload images or draw onto bread, then toast! Educational link (from menu) has interesting facts about bread; donations made to Share Our strength for each piece of art created.

Stevens, V. (2008). Trial by Twitter: The rise and slide of the year's most viral microblogging platform. TESL-EJ: Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, 12(1). This article did not focus just on Connectivism or just on communities of practice but provided a clear example of both after my previous readings. If you think about the basic fundamental of twitter it would be easy to discount at first whether or not it would be successful. I'm sure along the way some may have even felt that it was a fad destined to fail or fade. Who would want to be limited to only one hundred and fifty characters to get out a complete thought and why would anyone be interested. Well right now according to this article twitter is the most popular microblogging tool that has existed. I found it interesting if you have read my previous articles especially about linguistics in communities of practice that twitter type has made its way into our everyday vernacular, such as saying hash tag in actual dictation. Interesting that a change in our speech and actions are indicators of belonging to a certain community of practice, much like how some groups say 'lol' instead of actually laughing out loud. This article draws these dots that are easily linked together to show Connectivism. The author spends time explaining when he "got" twitter, or when it dawned on him this is an excellent tool. From there he uses some great analogies to describe the connected world twitter produces for millions of users a day. My favorite quote from his article "To 'get' twitter, you have to have your finger on the pulse of what is pumping lifeblood through the Internet, and that is the people on it and how they come together (Connectivism), connect, and relate to one another (communities of practice) in virtual learning networks". (Stevens,2008)

I didn't realize Twitter had been around as long as it has - I also didn't know it's origins. Lost most of the social media sites it's changed a lot since the beginning!

Great post and I was cracking up at "The Twitter Curve" image. It gave a good explanation to me about what makes Twitter so powerful and its benefits but am also glad it touched on things to be leery of.

I chose to share this link for two reasons: 1) It describes communities of practice, ways to support CoPs through networking, social learning, and online identities. 2) It's presented via a wiki, which is a platform that embodies the spirit of SNL, CoPs and PLNs.

I found this site to be very informative in a brief way! I find sites such as this a nice way to get started on something...find out enough so you know where to go next!

I appreciate the comment in this wiki about communities of practice developing a common store of knowledge. When I first heard the term, communities of practice, a few years ago, I thought they were simply referring to a group of people with something in common, not necessarily a group with a common purpose or goal toward which they are actively working.

MiddleWeb is all about the middle grades - with a sharp focus on teaching and learning in grades 4-8. It is a central location to find resources, commentary and advice from expert teachers and learning leaders, and book reviews.

Chris, Great little site for the middle school environment. The color scheme and graphics composed on the site make it really fun and the ease of the image buttons are great too. Lots of information for students at that age groups to explore.

University of Southern California class is using Pinterest for assignments. They use the social media app to gather images for a project on public art.

Get the latest outer space and science news, NASA information, watch space flight videos at Space.com. View exclusive solar system Images, latest astronomy news and more.

Easily Create Photo Books, Scrapbooks, Photo Cards, Yearbooks and Calendars in minutes with our simple online scrapbooking software. Great for students to create e-books with text and images.

Search over 230,000 free photos, illustrations, and vector graphics or share your own pictures as public domain on Pixabay.

The author of this article, Ilona Buchem, is a co-author of a PLE study titled Understanding Personal Learning Environments: Literature review and synthesis through the Activity Theory Lens. In the study the authors propose a framework they call the Activity Theory Triangle. The theory attempts to define the main dimensions of a PLE in order to study their impact.

The true impact of PLEs needs to be measured/documented/observed/shared in order to ensure their sustainability. Great image and important components of documentation are noted.

A site which gives a lot of great information on multimedia and hypermedia uses in the classroom, as well as many informational resources.

There is a clear disconnect between the media students are accustomed to using outside the classroom and the media they predominantly use within the classroom. Students spend copious amounts of their free time socializing, shopping, and even studying on the Internet, where they are flooded with text, images, video, animation, and sound in what is a complex multimedia environment.

This is a short little slide share on the basics of connectivism learning theory as proposed by George Siemens. It's very basic and straight forward. I like the metaphor used for learning. I also like the images of the different social networks on the first slide.

A slide show production on connectivism, including definitions and comparisons/contrasts with constructivism.