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This graduate dissertation was particularly interesting to me since it focuses on K-12 Spanish teachers. The author discusses how communities of practice can be used as professional development and ongoing language training, particularly for non-native speakers. The research includes the use of technology in that the community of practice studied was conducted online.

I can see the use of CoP being very beneficial for non-native speakers. The technologies are the tools that would help to bridge the learning gaps and support learners. Non-native speakers often feel very isolated in learning environments, as having more than one learning group would be helpful. What a great dissertation topic.

Gives some insight into the tools students born in the digital use everyday, and they use the tools.

Gives some insight into the tools students born in the digital use everyday, and how they use the tools.

If you are interested in using skype in the classroom, this may be a great article to check out! The author does a great job of taking you through her first few attempts and what worked and what didn't. She uses it to have her students learn more about Antarctica but the uses for this are truly endless! We have a problem with our foreign language students getting a chance to practice with a native speaker. This may be a great idea to connect our school with a school in France or Spain.

ESL Videos is a site which allows users to make quizzes from YouTube videos. There are already a number of shared quizzes and videos made. These quizzes are put into levels. I think some teachers may find the quizzes applicable to native speaker students as well.

Spanish Proficiency Exercises is a compilation of video clips in which native speakers of Spanish from various locations throughout Latin America and Spain demonstrate various language tasks.

The authors of the paper postulate that traditional learning theories do not adequately cover the use of mobile technologies, particularly phones in a learning context. This paper looks at a class of native Arabic speaking students learning English as a second language through the use of mobile phones and facebook. They conclude that in this context, connectivism fully accounts for the interactions that their students naturally gravitated towards when interacting in english thus furthering their study of interest.

In Dominique Chargois's Spanish III classes, students interact with native Spanish speakers on Livemocha, a social network for learners of foreign languages. Chargois has used Livemocha Active Spanish as a supplemental learning tool in all of her Spanish III sections in order to engage students and inspire them to learn ad so they could work at their own pace. It also helps expand students' horizons by 'chatting' with individuals who live outside the U.S.

LiveMocha is a powerful online language learning community that allows you to interact with native speakers of many languages. It also provides a selection of free and paid language lessons.

English Language Learners can find pictures by category, then see and hear English words

I like this one! Have you seen the Visual Thesaurus? It's also very cool and useful for both ELL and native English language learners: http://www.visualthesaurus.com

Susan, thanks for the reference; I like that one, too!

This adds some perspective on Siemen's core principles of connectivism and includes a nice TED talk on the power of visualization; there is little research on ways connectivism is implemented in the classroom and how it actually affects learners; requires a rethinking of education and the roles of teachers, students, and technology

This is a great explanation of how online learning and connectivism are connected and how this is a relatively new idea and that online educators can try out a lot of the ideas. It helped me understand the theory of connectivism a little more and how it can be used in online learning.

I like the ideas for applying connectivism principles in the classroom. The author explains the teacher's responsibility in helping students make connections that will allow them to learn now and in the future.