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I really connect to theory through hearing about practice. In this article by Tom Whitby for Edutopia, he shares 6 different stories from 6 different educators who have begun to engage with online professional learning networks. I connected to this article because I had the same path as many of these educators. Whether it was the teacher who heard someone at a conference or the 29 year veteran who found herself in a 1:1 MacBook class, they all began peripherally and then developed into active participants in their online PLNs. This article is a pretty good setup for our upcoming adventures.

It was interesting to see most of their stories had to do with Twitter. I have resisted Twitter for so long because I do not understand it at all! Guess it's time to learn.

Reading personal stories from teachers really helps me see how educators are using Twitter, and other technologies, in the classroom. I appreciated reading the variety of ways these teachers use Twitter to communicate with students and connect with other educators professionally. I'm beginning to see the value of Twitter as a professional network builder!

This research effort developed by Barbara F. Hartigan, Ed.D. and Marialice B.F.X. Curran, Ph.D at University of Saint Joseph that looks at connectivism in the context of using social media as a mentorship program for pre-service teachers. It is based off the researchers witnessing teachers on Twitter who engage in the Twitter chat #kinderchat mentoring a first year kindergarten teacher through their weekly chats. This developed into a research project where they embedded social media into the program for 19 pre-service teachers. They used mostly Twitter, Skype, and blogging and found that all of the participants learn from and value learning and teaching ideas and methodology obtained from their social media interactions. They note that next steps would be to follow those educators into their classrooms to see their continued development using social media.