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By: Eitenne C. Wenger and William M. Snyder Wenger, E. C., & Snyder, W. M. (2000). Communities of practice: The organizational frontier. Harvard business review, 78(1), 139-146. The first article I started with was a Harvard Business review entry regarding communities of practice within organizations. While my other articles focused on the education world and describe actions within the social environment, this article took a different approach in explaining the inner workings CofP's play in the office. The fundamental meaning communities of practice represent go unchanged, but it is interesting that this article puts a table and explanation for the differences other office groups represent, such as an informal network, project team, and formal work group. This distinction allows for other varied communities of practice to be represented. Such as the education field and social psychology. Wenger and Snyder then take the article one step further by explaining the uses of CoPs for management and how to facilitate their growth for strong company cultures.

This article is great that CoPs and PLNs (PLEs) build upon one another to drive a foundational strategy. The primary group might only be a few people but will continue to build to the point that the entire organization is involved. I also think it is important to discuss how this is utilized not only in education but also in business (or other fields). Great pick Jason!

I liked some of the real world examples for benefits of CoP's. The story of the technician who came up with the pneumatic tube idea that was ulitmately adopted because of support from his fellow technicians was really cool to hear.

This paper, by Ana Maria Marhan examines connectivism and social media. The author points out that because today's learning is a "messy, nebulous, informal, chaotic process, we need to rethink how we design our instruction. This hit home because I just moved to a new state and a new district, and they are very strict with, well, just about everything on the computer! I teach at a Title 1 high school, and these kids would truly benefit from instruction that wasn't so linear. These learners (like all learners) form their own pathways of knowledge, and I believe I could make a stronger impact on them if I could use more tools.

Marhan, A. M. (2006). Connectivism: Concepts and Principles for emerging Learning Networks. In The 1 st Conference on Virtual Learning. In this article author, Ana-Maria Marhan does a good job exploring the principals pushing forward Connectivism as a pedagogical helper. This becomes apparent right from her abstract "Connectivism views learning as a network creation process, and looks at how we might provide 'learning ecologies' to meet the learners' needs.". In her first section, she defines learning as "a persisting change in human performance or performance potential which must come about as a result of the learner's experience and interaction with the world." As soon as I read the last few words "interaction with the world", I began to connect the dots (no pun intended) to what I've read thus far about communities of practice. She spreads out on a handful of relevant and interesting subtopics to the overall theme of Connectivism. After she describes more about the new connected and growing world we live in she tackles the basics of Connectivism as a theory of learning and the principals behind it. Again like other articles she echoes many of the same sentiments George Siemens made when he originally proposed the learning theory. After the background on Siemens theory, she begins to draw everything together. One statement that I enjoyed was "Individual is the starting point of Connectivism: personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into communities, organizations or institutions, which in turn feed back into the network and then continue to provide learning to individual". She does a great job of supporting the use of technology not as the new power of learning but as a tool to unlock that power. "When knowledge, however, is needed but not known, the ability to plug into sources to meet the requirements becomes a vital skill".

I also appreciate how Marhan suggests that connected learning is cyclical: "Individual is the starting point of Connectivism: personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into communities, organizations or institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individual."

Great article comparing traditional writing versus using a computer along with the effect of keyboarding.

Diigo has clear advantages to the individual that needs to store and recall important information. But how can it be used in the classroom? This blog post shares a few options for using Diigo in the classroom. One common problem of student computer use in schools is access to student work from home. Using Diigo, students can bookmark important websites and access them from school, home, the library or any internet-connected computer. Students will always have access to this data. Teachers and students can use the group and list features of Diigo to organize bookmarks on themes or topics. Classes can also collaborate and discuss information within Diigo.

This is an example of how a science department is using wikispaces to organize the curriculum for many of their classes. I was hoping to find teachers using wikispaces the way I was originally taught to use them- as a place for students to collaborate and build a wiki together. You can see what I wrote for an assignment, but I don't have any students with whom to use it: http://learningsciencealacarte.wikispaces.com/Biological_Molecules

I chose this page because it shows how various schools have used Schoology's Learning Management System for organizing their classroom needs including discussions and cloud-based collaborations.

This website organizes groups of four students to work collaboratively to create a blog. Each student is in charge of writing to the blog for one week, others make comments during their "off" weeks. The cycle continues for 4 months.

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

Chapter 2 begins with a good description of the theory of communities of learning as a way to learn not through cognition or other previous theories but through social interaction. Communities are organized organically unlike school classes and are a places where learning can unfold.

This particular document looks at the communities of practice model from the lens of a government agency in its' partnership with businesses, foundations, non-profits, and other organizations. The document's value comes to life in the fact that it focuses on how the communities of practice implemented are more of a valid method for productivity because a shared interest is involved and the experiences are shared. First time viewers of this document would benefit from the diagram on page 8 that explores the distinct features of the community, domain and practice which lead to a successful community of practice. The diagram is an excellent means of introducing the model to new participants or those already engaged in a community of practice, but simply unaware of their involvement. I also appreciate this document because it offers practicality and context in viewing how multiple entities can come together to form a community of practice united by a common purpose.

I found this article interesting because it talked about the value of using CoP's in management, in particular government. It details the changing age of technology in meeting the demands and needs of communities and organizations around the world. As needs and wants begin to move, so do the challenges that are provided to government. In this regard it talks about utilizing the value on online communities to help create a network of highly skilled people to meet these new demands. By engaging people in this kind of networking through social media people are able to better handle new situations by connecting with people who have experienced similar problems in the past.

This essay makes an argument that organizations need to include social learning systems, such as communities of practice, in order to achieve success. The author explains social learning and explains why communities of practice are beneficial.

This article looks at communities of practice from different sections of a community such as individuals and organizations. The article starts with a social definition of learning and then takes a deep look at the structure of communities of practice and social learning networks.

This is a great resource for Software Support Tools for Assessment and Grading. This was put together my NEWA the organization that developed the MAPS test. Some of these I wouldn't have thought of for Assessment, like Lino. Lino is an old-time virtual bulletin board where you post "sticky" notes. I've seen this used as a "parking lot" for questions during PD, but I think I'll try it for assessment with teachers next training I lead.

Here is another site with educational games. This one is organized by content, but it also is broken up by grade-level. There are also some language learning websites listed.

A free online application that allows you to create mindmaps to share.

This is a website that allows students and teachers to create a graphic organizer for writing activities. When an account is created, the graphic organizer can be stored online to work with at a later time or at home.

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. It lives right where you do your work-in the web browser itself. It has an awesome add-on for Firefox that helps stay organized and cite references.

Lighthearted and simple. Not a source for real academic study but 3 min which helps to clarify. The best part is that he makes it very clear a PLN is not organized by anyone.

This is a podcast of a lecture that George Siemens gave at the Ann Ferren conference. He talks about connectivism, learner self-organization in online courses and social networks he has been involved with as well as his efforts to connect open free personal learning networks of our social lives with a more rigorous university setting.

The CLA supports educators, youth organizations and others to create meaningful social, interest driven, civic and participatory learning opportunities for youth. Watch the videos on the "Why Connected Learning" page of the website.

Great videos on connected learning. How do I get my school to that place? Very true, traditional learning used to take place within the confines of a school, but now we have so much more we can offer students. I passed it along to my admin, he has this line of thinking, but we need to encourage follow through.

Graphic Organizer Tools for Teachers and Students