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cynthia mills

Why Every Teacher Needs Personal Learning Networks - 6 views

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    This is a great site to get started understanding the benefits of PLN's. In particular, I like the fact that when discussing the benefits of PLN's the author, Education in America, brings up the fact that even though teachers are surrounded by students and colleagues, teaching can be an isolating experience. I've been there, and I know that having a PLN has not only made me feel connected, but also it has helped me share ideas in a more personal way.
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    This is an awesome article about the utilization of PLNs. I love that the fact that it shows that teachers are still learning and evolving with the students and information. We as instructors must adapt to new information and not be passive in our learning, if we are passive the information will change and the students will have access to it, which we will lose credibility. This active teaching and learning model is key for the modern world of education.
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    I appreciate this blog post pointing out the need and helpfulness of PLN for educators. In the past teaching has been a very isolating experience where everything learned and gained from teaching experiences was kept within a teacher's own development and classroom. Also, the climate for sharing was not always encouraged within the school and between teachers. By actively taking part in a PLN, teachers have the advantage of sharing, learning, and growing with other educators and researchers. I wish the article would have gone into more depth with some examples, as I found I wanted to read more specifically about this impact in action.
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    I like the idea of PLNs rather than PLCs. The school divisions I have worked for have used PLCs for teachers to avoid that isolated feeling. They work great for teachers who are in a building with more than one teacher in their content area or grade level. They do not work well at all if the teacher has to work with someone that does not teach the same grade level or content. I can see how this would be great for teachers in a rural school, where access to other teachers is limited. Another benefit for teachers who use social networks (ie. blogs, wikispace, facebook) for their PLN is that they may be more inclined to be active participants. These social networks can be less threatening to a teacher who may be shy or hesitant to speak up face to face.
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    I enjoyed reading this article. It would be a great resource to help get schools involved in PLNs. There were many benefits for teachers that are in PLNs. I would enjoy having the benefits of resources from other professionals in my field. Collaboration is a great resource to help you become a better teacher.
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    I liked the fact that this site recognizes that "teaching can be an isolated profession"! Very interesting article.
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    I have to agree with the statement in this article about teaching being an isolated profession. I felt that many times and often wished that I had the remedy. In hindsight, I think a better network would have been helpful. Most of my time spent in a traditional classroom setting (face to face instruction) was as a lone teacher in a very small school. A better PLN would have been very helpful.
Daniel Oldham

Designing for change: mash-up personal learning environments - 3 views

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    This article discusses that learning should not be a passive learning dependent on artifacts but should be active learning utilizing evolving data and learning networks. This will provide for an environment to overcome socioeconomic differences.
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    Hi Daniel! I appreciate that this resource addresses how eLearning and networking can break down the barrier of socioeconomic differences that can really hinder some students' achievement. Thanks for sharing!
kimsmith876

Foundations of Communities of Practice: Enablers and Barriers to Participation - 0 views

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    In this article, Guldberg and Mackness focus on issues that both encourage and impede an individual's ability to participate in communities of practice. These issues were addressed based on their participation in a workshop focusing on understanding communities of practice. From this, they were able to identify five areas: emotion, technology, connectivity, understanding norms, and learning tensions that contributed to each participant's active or passive engagement in the workshop's community of practice.
agilin

The Value of Connectivism -- THE Journal - 11 views

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    In this article from The Journal Patricia Deubel, Ph.D give a really good break down of connectivity and how learn now for students is not about know what but knowing where to find it.
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    What a great article that shows merit for connectivism in the new tech age. The comment about students not seeing the importance in passive activities is becoming prevelant in my own classroom. Taking into account the changes that are occuring with technology and internet, as well as the use of communities of practice can help educators best reach students using connectivism theories and approaches.
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    "Connectivism recognizes that learning resides in a collective of individuals' opinions and nonhuman appliances." This is a great statement to show that connectivist theory centers on the interaction of people. In addition, it explains how the new theory works with personal networks and communities of practice. The digital age is transforming the way people approach learning.
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    The phrase "know where" in relation to connectivism is a great way to describe it. I have found that the most important aspect of my job is to know where to find the answer, the people that understand that concept are the most successful.
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    One of the things that I really appreciated about this article is that it highlights how much learning has become a non-linear activity. I actually think that way naturally, but many people don't. This helps me to have insight into how to explain my process a bit and to appreciate that quality in other learners.
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    Great article discussing the emergence of connectivism. It describes an ecological approach to learning and mentions various tools that are available through CoPs and PNLs. It focuses on educators being lifelong learners and utilizing the resources that are available through digital networks.
amandahensley

Social Networking Websites as an Innovative Framework for Connectivism - 9 views

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    This article makes a connection between social networks and the theory of connectivism and how this theory can help education through social networks.
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    In identifying the role of social networking in reference to connectivism the author identifies that among the entire population that uses the internet some 75% are are members of social networking sites. "The role of Web 2.0 technologies is to provide a network of people who connect to each other wherever and whenever they need information." states Tinmaz. Thus, when people are in need of information they have access to an abundance of resources. This had led to the passive acquisition of knowledge by students to trying to create an active and engaged student populous in constructing their own knowledge. Part of this is the connections students build through online social networks. These networks allow for students to follow the flow of information and stay current in the changing information on a day to day basis. One of the new concepts is called a "hub" which is a main center for information distribution. Those people or places who serve as hubs help disseminate information throughout to other students. These social networks allow for easy access and the streaming of information on a constant basis to all people involved. This connectivity to learning allows for all students and others to remain involved in connecting their learning.
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    I like this article because it directly associates social networks, connectivism, and education. This quote from the article does a good job describing how: "The Connectivist theory has demonstrated that on a connected network, learners increase their capacities, performances, and levels of knowledge while creating and reforming the information. In that sense, social networking websites comprising already linked members in their innate technologies have a superior potential to enrich learners' current knowledge, skills, and abilities."
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    The article addresses one of the concerns I have regarding connectivism and social networking: the credibility and accuracy of information. Even in my PLN of educated people, misinformation can spread like wildfire. Unfortunately, if one of the respected members of a social network passes on information without checking the veracity of the information, misinformation can be given an air of legitimacy. In my networks, if the information is incorrect or outdated, I include a link to clear up the misinformation. However, you cannot "unring a bell", and the misinformation takes on a life of its own as "truth"
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    This article discusses the learning networks that have been created with the rise of so many social networking websites and how that relates to connectivism in terms of how people of this generation learn. The author asserts that today's learners are different from learners of the past because they require a social aspect to successfully acquire knowledge. This supports the proposed learning theory of connectivism, which they cite as meaning that "knowledge and cognition are distributed across networks of people and technology, and learning is the process of connecting, growing, and navigating those networks" (Siemens and Tittenberger (2009). The article identifies the need for a new perspective of integrating social networking websites using connectivism as an instructional strategy.
Beth Transue

Personal Learning Environments and Personal Learning Networks - 4 views

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    This article provides an introduction and overview for personal learning environments and digital learning pedagogy.
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    Beth, good find I find that I very much agree with Markum in that one of the "best ways to make an impact on learners is to mentor them through project-based learning." Learning shouldn't be passive or a spectator sport. Students that are involved, hands on, through projects applying the materials that they are learning are more likely to master the concepts in my experience.
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    This article touches on one of the most important aspects of the discussions on personal learning environments. Students and educators have to be taught and mentored when it comes to internet usage and how to sift all of the information and resources that are available.Teachers who imagine they can just let the students lose and all will be well will have many unforeseen difficulties.
cynthia mills

Social Networking: Learning Theory in Action - 2 views

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    In this article that focuses on social networking and learning, Ruth Reynard explores research conducted by The National School Boards Association (USA), in partnership with research firm Grunwald Associates and with the support of Microsoft, Newscorp, and Verizon, published a 2007. The research cited indicates that learning through social networks is mostly "unidirectional (posting messages, downloading media files, updating personal information) and students utilize it as "a self-reflective learning environment." However, the author points out that the researchers also found if instructional design is geared toward "the user controlling the tool rather than the tool dictating the user's activity," learning collaboratively can increase knowledge because the learner becomes actively engaged in the task, rather than passively approaching it.
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    I really like the message where it says that students become more actively engaged when they control the tool rather than the tool dictating the user's activity. The students then take control of their learning. They map the course they want to take.
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    this was very interesting - I found myself wondering how much of it was still relevant given its "age." Crazy that 2008 is "old" but social media has changed so much since then!
danielbmc

Three Generations of Distance Education Pedagogy - 1 views

  • cognitive-behaviourist, social constructivist, and connectivist pedagogy
  • explore distance education systems as they have evolved through three eras of educational, social, and psychological development
  • requirement for distance education to be technologically mediated in order to span the geographic and often temporal distance between learners, teachers, and institutions, it is common to think of development or generations of distance education in terms of the technology used to span these distances
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  • first generation of distance education technology was by postal correspondence
  • second generation, defined by the mass media of television, radio, and film production
  • interactive technologies: first audio, then text, video, and then web and immersive conferencing
  • less clear what defines the so-called fourth- and even fifth-generation distance technologies except for a use of intelligent data bases (Taylor, 2002) that create “intelligent flexible learning” or that incorporate Web 2.0 or semantic web technologies
  • repertoire of options available to DE designers and learners has increase
  • Many educators pride themselves on being pedagogically (as opposed to technologically) driven in their teaching and learning designs
  • two being intertwined in a dance: the technology sets the beat and creates the music, while the pedagogy defines the moves
  • To some extent, our pedagogical processes may themselves be viewed as technologies
  • none of these three pedagogical generations has disappeared, and we will argue that all three can and should be effectively used to address the full spectrum of learning needs and aspirations of 21st century learners.
  • Behavioural learning theory begins with notions of learning which are generally defined as new behaviours or changes in behaviours that are acquired as the result of an individual’s response to stimuli
  • Although learning was still conceived of as an individual process, its study expanded from an exclusive focus on behaviour to changes in knowledge or capacity that are stored and recalled in individual memory.
  • The locus of control in a CB model is very much the teacher or instructional designer
  • It is notable that such models gained a foothold in distance education at a time when there were limited technologies available that allowed many-to-many communication. Teleconferencing was perhaps the most successful means available but came with associated costs and complexity that limited its usefulness. The postal service and publication or redistribution of messages was very slow, expensive, and limited in scope for interactivity. Methods that relied on one-to-many and one-to-one communication were really the only sensible options because of the constraints of the surrounding technologies.
  • Cognitive presence is the means and context through which learners construct and confirm new knowledge
  • Later developments in cognitive theory have attempted to design learning materials in ways that maximized brain efficiency and effectiveness by attending to the types, ordering, timing, and nature of learning stimulations
  • Learning was thought of as an individual process, and thus it made little difference if one was reading a book, watching a movie, or interacting with a computer-assisted learning program by oneself or in the company of other learners
  • reduction of the role and importance of the teacher further fueled resentment by traditional educators against the CB model of distance education
  • While appropriate when learning objectives are very clear, CB models avoid dealing with the full richness and complexity of humans learning to be, as opposed to learning to do
  • People are not blank slates but begin with models and knowledge of the world and learn and exist in a social context of great intricacy and depth.
  • technology became widely used to create opportunities for both synchronous and asynchronous interactions between and among students and teachers
  • Social-constructivist pedagogy acknowledges the social nature of knowledge and of its creation in the minds of individual learners.
  • Teachers do not merely transmit knowledge to be passively consumed by learners; rather, each learner constructs means by which new knowledge is both created and integrated with existing knowledge
  • The locus of control in a social-constructivist system shifts somewhat away from the teacher, who becomes more of a guide than an instructor, but who assumes the critical role of shaping the learning activities and designing the structure in which those activities occur
  • social-constructivist models only began to gain a foothold in distance education when the technologies of many-to-many communication became widely available, enabled first by email and bulletin boards, and later through the World Wide Web and mobile technologies
  • Cognitive presence also assumes that learners are actively engaged, and interaction with peers is perhaps the most cost-effective way to support cognitive presence
  • It remains challenging to apply learning where it can blossom into application and thus demonstrate true understanding
  • Social interaction is a defining feature of constructivist pedagogies. At a distance, this interaction is always mediated, but nonetheless, it is considered to be a critical component of quality distance education
  • the educator is a guide, helper, and partner where the content is secondary to the learning process; the source of knowledge lies primarily in experiences
  • teaching presence in constructivist pedagogical models focuses on guiding and evaluating authentic tasks performed in realistic contexts.
  • Constructivist distance education pedagogies moved distance learning beyond the narrow type of knowledge transmission that could be encapsulated easily in media through to the use of synchronous and asynchronous, human communications-based learning
  • learning is the process of building networks of information, contacts, and resources that are applied to real problems. Connectivism was developed in the information age of a networked era (Castells, 1996) and assumes ubiquitous access to networked technologies
  • Connectivism also assumes that information is plentiful and that the learner’s role is not to memorize or even understand everything, but to have the capacity to find and apply knowledge when and where it is needed.
  • It is noteworthy that connectivist models explicitly rely on the ubiquity of networked connections between people, digital artifacts, and content, which would have been inconceivable as forms of distance learning were the World Wide Web not available to mediate the process. Thus, as we have seen in the case of the earlier generations of distance learning, technology has played a major role in determining the potential pedagogies that may be employed.
  • learners have access to powerful networks and, as importantly, are literate and confident enough to exploit these networks in completing learning tasks
  • exposing students to networks and providing opportunities for them to gain a sense of self-efficacy in networked-based cognitive skills and the process of developing their own net presence
  • Connectivist learning is based as much upon production as consumption of educational content
  • The activities of learners are reflected in their contributions to wikis, Twitter, threaded conferences, Voicethreads, and other network tools. Further, social presence is retained and promoted through the comments, contributions, and insights of students who have previously engaged in the course and that persist as augmentable archives to enrich network interactions for current students
  • learners and teacher collaborate to create the content of study, and in the process re-create that content for future use by others
  • stress to teaching presence is the challenge presented by rapidly changing technologies
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    How three theories have shaped distance learning over the years. Connectivist theory shows how learning is about forming connections with others through human and digital interaction. Developed in the digital age and assumes access to social networking technologies.
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    This is a March 2011 journal article that highlights the shifts in technology and theory for distance learning. First, there was the cognitive-behaviorist with it's focus on read, watch, and recall. As the web developed, we saw constructivism shift the teachers duties from content creator to a guide through the content as students synthesized. Connectivism promotes the teacher as a "co-traveler" helping students to explore, connect, and create.
Renee Phoenix

Why do academics blog? An analysis of audiences, purposes and challenges - 3 views

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    A content analysis of 100 academic blogs that looks at reasons academics give for blogging and the connection it may have to community of practice.
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    I really enjoyed reading this article as it provided further insight into the "why" teachers and higher ed professionals should engage in blogging. Three main ideas really jumped out to me and solidified the validity of blogging: "blogs are a way to expand and disseminate knowledge, make contact with potential collaborators, and have scholarly discussions on a global scale". By engaging in these blogs we enter into a CoP that promotes these virtues by nature as all those involved in the CoP have similar motivations and goals. The communities then function as an opportunity to collaborate on materials, subject matter, and other issues pertinent to the educators. One aspect that is noted is that blogs provide a specific function, thus different blogs will contain different topics, subject matter, and ideas that can be shared online.
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    When I used to blog, I realized it was a passive-aggressive way for me to complain about my District. So, I stopped. However, I have found other academic blogs useful. One of my classmates in the EdD program blogs daily, and she is a great source of information. Blogs are also good starting points for research. Reading them often broadens my perspective which in turn helps me in my search for sources.
jkraschnewski

"Together we are better." - 1 views

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    Here is a very complex study. Fortunately, the highlights tell us some important findings. This study went with the understanding that teachers have organically formed professional learning networks using the Internet, and report that they like them. This study focused on putting some data behind that, which it has provided. As a teacher, I found this quote very refreshing, about a researcher that "argued that top-down teacher PD in schools often aligns with hierarchical structures that de-skill teachers from their intellectual work by treating them as passive recipients of mandates. Even the term "professional development" conveys that teachers are "deficient and in need of developing and directing." In my own PLN, I have learned much more about teaching and learning from an 8th grade math teacher than I have in any of my administration-mandated social studies PD sessions.
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    I'll be honest, I did not read the entire study, but the highlights from this article and the abstract once again confirmed what I'm starting to realize. We are teaching in a way that is behind the times when it comes to the current ways students learn naturally. We are fighting their expectations trying to bottle them into the box that is traditional education.
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