Students drew their monsters and wrote a description of them. Then, they skyped their monster exchange partner to share their description. As they shared their description, their partner would draw what they visualized. The projects turned out very nice! Check it out!
This is an amazing project where classrooms are connected to authors through services such as Skype! Students don't need to leave the school to meet their favorite writers!
This article talks about the benefits of virtual field trips. It also talks about a specific school near Pittsburgh that took a virtual field trip through videoconferencing. The students did an e-Mission to learn about earth Science.
Another example of Skype and Edmodo used to connect multiple classes across the world. Here is an extensive explanation of how they used all of these tools to help them bond with the other classes.
This project was a holiday card exchange project in which one class made cards for another one across the world. When the class in China received their cards, they skyped the class in IL to talk to them and thank them.
This blog is a wonderful resource for elementary Science teachers. I teach a lot of similar topics so I find it helpful when I need out of the box and fun plans.
This website defines and describes communities of practice. There are examples of what each element looks and sounds like. It also offers examples of how communities of practice are being implemented in different settings.
Communities of practice are groups of people who share the same job or a common interest in a subject. They come together to form a link to help each other perform in the world around them. This article talks about the value of communities of practice and how and why they work.
An article about connectivism and the beginnings of this theory. Connectivism brings a big change to the learning design in schools and organizations. Examples are given in this article of how connectivism could be implemented.
This article describes three types of connected learning communities. These include professional learning communities (PLCs), personal learning networks (PLNs), and communities of practice (CoPs). All three are used in schools across the world now and serve different but very similar purposes.
Brenda A. Dyck works with teachers to learn the newest technologies to apply in the classroom. In this article she lists many Web 2.0 tools that she has used in her professional development training sessions and describes why they are useful.
This article by Amy Chu on the Education in America website discusses how professional development has evolved from face to face interactions to online discussions. It lists some of the many websites used by teachers now to create these PLNs.
This article reviews how behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism have all been central ideas that we based our teaching on. However, in the new digital age, it is becoming evident that we need to shift to a connectivism point of view. We need to use the resources we have to connect with teachers and learn from each other.
This paper is interesting because it focuses on learning communities amongst students rather than teachers. We often think of PLCs as an important aspect in creating a network amongst teachers but it is also an effective way of teaching in the classroom. There are several examples of this idea described in the paper.
