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This site was founded "to restore critical thinking, facts, reason, and civility to American public discourse." I assign debates in my classes and I go to this site for topics, resources, and a general model of how to debate.

This video describes COP and how they work.

This video packs a lot of information into 4 minutes. It provides a great overview of communities of practice. I like how it delves into what the ideal model would look like.

I like how this video goes beyond just the definition of a CoP and into why they are important, who is talking about them, what criteria is needed for one, etc.

In this article, Wenger defines Communities of Practice (COP) as a "tribe learning to survive," (p. 1) although learning isn't always the goal of the group but can be an outcome. Members are committed to their community and create a shared practice of networking for a specific purpose. Originally associations and groups, the Internet is extending the reach of COPs and increasing the flow of information.

For those who have never heard of communities of practice, this resource explains it well. What are communities of practice, what do communities of practice look like, where does the concept come from and how it is being applied is all covered.

This is a brief but comprehensive introduction as to what communities of practice are by Etienne Wenger. One important aspect addressed is that learning is a product of a community of practice whether intentionally or not. It also gives multiple examples of what a common community of practice can look like such as problem solving, discussing developments, and visits. The concept came to be as a learning model by Wenger and Jean Lave. The concepts has many applications but a couple common places these communities are seen are organizations, government, education, and technology.

I am biased as I am a Will Richardson fan. I went to a day with him last year and it changed so much about what I thought. As a direct result I signed up for twitter and began to try and connect with people. He wrote a book on PLN's and his last TED book 'Why School' is a must read. Here he talks through the whole topic as well as big picture issues. Focused on education and good practice. Love the way he thinks and explains. Worth a follow think he is @willrich45

Thank you for the post, It was very insightful. I like how he compares a PLN to your own bigger brain, or something along those lines. I think this is a great way to think of a PLN. There is so much information out there one person can't possibly conceptualize it all, so we create PLNs a system of more brains to consult whenever we have problems or questions.

Richardson summarizes the importance and components of PLNs for educators and students. He summarizes that PLNs are networks of like-minded people that act as a network that converse and brainstorm answers to questions. Richardson notes that PLNs act as powerful sources of professional development for teachers. He discusses the current state of PLNs in our students' lives and how they are creating their own connections through various social media platforms. Finally, he relays the responsibility of teachers to inform themselves about PLNs in order to properly and safely guide our students through the use of PLNs.

Teachers are developing PLNs to connect with other educators and professionals all over the world to stay up to date on their teaching methods and resources. This article gives an overview of why many teachers belong to a PLN and why it is beneficial to their professional goals. I appreciated that the author named and discussed three popular PLNs that I plan on looking into further. They were Classroom 2.0, Edmodo, and The Educator's PLN. I agree with the author completely when he states that "teachers are lifelong learners." This article is a great read for those new to PLNs.

I loved all of the information on the various tools that can used in managing a PLN, There were several tools I wasn't familiar with and look forward to being able to use in the future.

I found this post to be extremely informative regarding how teachers can use PLNs for learning, moreover for modeling learning for their students. The social network portion of this article was authentic to the purpose of this course and aided in making connections regarding the usage of social networks for educational learning tasks. The review of the three PLNs was also helpful as we navigate this course and begin to implement strategies and plans for the incorporation of social networking into our own classrooms.

Summary: The authors in this article analyze the evolution of communities of practice, or as they refer to them, CoPs. They define communities of practice as opportunities for sharing knowledge, learning through modeling, and observing. These CoPs have transformed from individuals wanting to learning and grow to a management system in which CoPs have changed slightly with terminology. This particular article highlights the need for a facilitator.

This article was written to compare the new-age learning theory Connectivism to the long-standing ideas of behaviorism, constructivism and others. Whether new or old, technology influences all theoretical viewpoints. Similar to communities of practices and networks, these theories are linked in many ways.

This article summarizes a study aimed at explaining collective behavior on social networking platforms through intentional social action, which is known as the We-Intention theory. The study focused on Facebook in particular, because it is widely popular among university students and could, thus, illustrate social media's impact on students' motivation to learn via virtual communities. In the article, the We-Intention theory is driven by social influence factors, social presence, and elements of the uses and gratifications (U&G) model. U&G, as defined in the article, explains why individuals gravitate toward certain digital media over others. U&G assumes individuals are both goal-directed and aware of their needs, listed as purposive value, self-discovery, entertainment, social enhancement, and maintenance of interpersonal connectivity. The study identified two U&G needs, entertainment and interpersonal connectivity, as significantly determining intentional social action under the We-Intention theory.

That article is very interesting stating that most use Facebook for instant communication and connection. The need for instant gratification. Joining too many groups or trying to connect to too many people does make it hard to have a specific connection to one group. May be the reason that people post so many random topics and photos.

Interesting perspective on Facebook from the point of view of students using the platform.Since most of my background is from K-12 education, I have not witnessed teachers using the platform with their students. I have found that most K-12 teachers use Facebook to communicate with parents. It does seem to have a similar impact on getting parents motivated and active in class activities. Most parents use Facebook and once they know they can follow their child's teacher and get updates via the social media app, parents tend to do so

Beth Transue, a librarian at Messiah College, begins this article with the suggestion that librarian educators reflect the tenets of the connectivist learning theory when designing their information literacy instruction. Transue mentions how the adoption of this theory in the development of library instruction can happen very easily as many of the connectivist principles are already evident in the steps of the research process. Transue spends the majority of the rest of the article talking about how the connectivist theory is connected to the model of the networked student proposed by W. Drexler in 2010. According to Drexler, a student uses information from four different domains: information management, contacts, synchronous communication, and RSS. The information management domain essentially covers the traditional library resources. The contact domain covers those who should be part of the student's personal learning network such as teachers, librarians, and classmates. The synchronous communication domain covers platforms like Twitter and the RSS domain covers blogs, wikis, and other social networks. The author spends the next couple of pages offering very specific directions for librarians to address individual domains in their information literacy instruction. Transue concludes the article by talking about what an information literacy session rooted in the connectivist theory might look like.

Hi Kelly, Interesting article. In one of the videos I found, the connection between research and connectivism was highlighted. I had not thought about that before, but it makes sense! And I've always enjoyed research, so good to know I've already been practicing connectivism on some level.

This article explores Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) as a way to introduce both formal and informal learning within higher education. Specifically, research shows how using a variety of social media tools to customize a PLE can foster learner-controlled instruction. To achieve the learning experience they desire, though, students must possess the skills needed to engage in a self-regulated learning system with the help of both an instructor and peers.

This article really demonstrates the role of the teacher in modeling and encouraging effective use of social media. In my opinion, the framework created by the author would work best under a constructivist learning environment since so much of the class would be taken up by teaching how to use technology. That said, once students were proficient, they could explore class subject-related information online.

This was an interesting article I found on the ISTE site where two educators provide two different points of view about whether teachers should have a professional social media presence. One writer say that teachers should absolutely have a social media presence so they can be models for their students while also broadening their own professional learning network. The other writer recognizes the amazing benefits of having a professional social media presence but also says that teacher's should not be required but rather educated in the benefits of social media for themselves and their students. This is a great article for looking at both sides of the social media presence coin and will lead to some good thinking on this topic of connectivism and professional learning networks online.

Jake, great resource! I often find that items that are mandated see more pushback from teachers even if the mandate is helpful. I think offering opportunities for teachers to learn and engage in social media will help build the grassroots movement and it will inevitably catch on.

The authors state the the use of blogs as aggregators for student Personal Learning Networks (PLN) is an effective tool to help organize the many fascists of unique environments. They point out that in order for students to successfully create and use their own PLNs there must first be a successful example by an instructor for the students to model. They point out that although students may be using several of the tools that will ultimately comprise their PLNs, it is a fallacy to assume that students inherently understand the power and connectedness of these environments.

This article explores connectivism as a learning theory, then discusses how to use personal learning networks in your communities of practice. The author quotes from many experts in communities of practice and connectivism. Much detail was given to blogging.

Although this article is focused specifically on public affairs education, it is relevant to all learners. The author discusses professional learning networks as methods to connect and build communities of practice. Using personal experiences teaching a college course, the author's creation of communities of practice took learning for students to the next level.

"Communities of practice (CoPs) are among the professional development strategies most widely used in such fields as management and education." This article expresses the use of Communities of practice as a part of the healthcare sector. I enjoyed reading about the similarities of needs among these professions and education, as all professionals should be involved in various communities of practice.

In this article two university librarians advocate using social media platforms to teach information literacy concepts. They believe that social media platforms, which students already engage in, provide a perfect focal point for showing students how they can access all kinds of information sources outside the realm of the traditional sources like books and scholarly articles. Because of the need to critically evaluate information found on the web, the use of social media for research provides an excellent demonstration model for this essential skill. Librarians, the authors say, should embrace a connectivist approach when using social media to show students the process for making connections between different sources of information.

This article seems so relevant, especially to my teaching experience. I think that teaching students how to use social media and evaluate information on the internet is not just something librarians should teach; it should be something all teachers cover as it is extremely valuable. As the world around us changes, so to must our teaching practices and the content we cover.