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WEMTA presentation

Great presentation design can be difficult to master because it requires the coordination of many elements, including colors, fonts, images, icons and background. While there are a lot of pieces to the presentation design puzzle, don't be overwhelmed. Let the design principle of "less is more" guide your presentation design choices to keep your slides uncluttered.

This Ted Talk can be used as an emerging trend not only in consumer choice but also technology use.

Wordle is a toy for generating "word clouds" from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like.

A site of lesson plans and activities that are really amazing. It says that a subscription is required but some activities can be accessed without one. Based in the UK.

Slides form GLOBALEDCON 2016

Informative, causes one to reflect about the changing nature of education and how to expand education beyond the four walls

This project also has students making a Facebook account for their character and using these accounts to communicate with other students. This is similar to the remixing assignment, but it is a long-term assignment rather than a culminating activity. Students start by making a Facebook page for their character and post status updates as the class reads the book. They talk from the perspective of their character and it allows students to expand their thinking. When students are done, they use their page to have discussions about the novel as a class and out of character. This is a great way for students to step into the chose of different characters they are reading about and has students participate in multi-level writing. This is applicable to numerous different reading projects and something I could see myself using in my English class.

This is a comprehensive list of online tools and web 2.0 applications. There are numerous tools on here that are organized by there specific purpose. Every tool works on a laptop or Chromebook and some even have Chrome extensions that can be installed. The list is constantly being updated which means it is work hanging onto as time goes on.

Siemens introduces connectivism as a theory for the digital age. He discusses the shift in learning theory that led to the creation of connectivism due to the need to make connections between specialized communities. He emphasizes the rapidly changing foundations of learning and information transfer and suggests that "creating, preserving, and utilizing information flow should be a key organizational activity." Ultimately, he suggests that connectivism is the way that education can meet the changing environment of learning.

This 2004 article by George Siemens discusses learning theories in general--what they are and their limitations. Siemens then goes on to discuss an "alternative theory"--that of connectivism. He specifically explores the fact that connectivism is part of the digital age because of the rapidly changing technology which enables more and more information flow. Siemens then goes on to briefly discuss the implications of connectivism.

This article investigates the beneifts and downfalls of behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. Then, it dives in to the idea of connectivism, and how we use it to develop new knowledge and skills. The article states that, "This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed."

This powerpoint describes connectivism, gives resources and also shows the pros and cons based on the information at the time.

Although this site is dedicated to knowledge management, this particular page focuses on what Communities of practice are, and it explains what learning is like within communities of practice. The bulleted lists are particularly helpful in summarizing the key concepts of CoPs.

I like this article because it addresses legitimate peripheral learning. The idea that we don't directly instruct new members, but instead allow them to do basic tasks within the community and then learn more important roles through daily observation. This idea and set-up reminds me heavily of an apprenticeship. New Members start at the bottom and learn until they are no longer on the outside but fully included within the community. Nice find with this article!

Great read on how we learn in COPs and the essential parts of COPs.

In this issue of CUE (Computer-Using Educators), the main theme is Personal Learning Networks. "PLN: Face-to-Face to The Net", "PLN: New Ways to Interact and Broaden Our Horizons" or "Overcoming the Barriers to Effective Ongoing Staff Development Through Online Communities of Practice" are some of the articles compiled in this CUE issue. Authors explain that other members of the PLN are the most important aspect, how empowering it is to share ideas and resources with a worldwide network or the way experienced/tenure teachers are been helped by younger teachers to develop computer-based competences.

This is a volume of Advancing Student Achievement through Technology: On Cue. It has many articles that I plan to read through, but the one that really caught my eye is "Professional Learning Communities- Can Our Students Do This Too?" on page 10. While it is not so much an explanation of a Professional Learning Community (PLC) I believe it is a great testament to what we are researching and trying to do through this course. The author was urged by her district to encourage PLCs in her 6th grade English classroom. With adults improving their education through the use of technology she feels her students should be doing it too. It gave many great quotes from the 6th grade students and I believe it is an encouraging article as we being to look at social media and the possible uses it can have within a classroom.