Professional re-enactors will replay the various aspects and roles from Viking culture. During the event, those at the show will be allowed to ask the Viking actors questions via twitter. This live question and answer time makes the storytelling that much more engaging for attendees.

The goal of the ongoing project (started in 2009) is to connect each classroom with 80 other classrooms around the world via Skype. This could be used to foster content from any discipline. Students would blog about the experiences they have with their partner schools.

Through a grant from a smartphone maker, students were given devices that would allow them to contact other students and tutors about math problems when not at school. It also gave them access to materials for class that they otherwise would not have had away from school. While this wouldn't be applicable in all schools, the social networking aspect of the program helped students better manage their personal learning experience.

Many schools would not be able to do this outside a computer lab. The idea may scare lots of teachers. It may be best for older learners. Students were encouraged to tweet questions and observations during a lecture. Students said this gave them the courage to ask something they would not otherwise have, or commented when they may have stayed silent. While this didn't teach content through twitter, it helped engage students with the content via social media.

This interactive site walks kids through the history of the some of the world's most famous conflicts. Role play, higher-order thinking skills, and problem solving engages students. One feature I like is the ability of students to blog a journal of their battle plans/results throughout the activity.

Students create a twitter account for a specific class (in this case journalism). They are encouraged to follow their classmates school accounts. Assignments are given about what specific tweets should be about. For history or geography class, these could be extremely specific and unit driven.

A series of podcasts that look into the history and people behind the start of our nation. Listeners may also contact the speaker via twitter to ask questions from the podcast series.

Classes from around the world can register for the project to work collaboratively online with other classrooms anywhere. I think I may have my students do this, actually. The cultural, geographical, and historic knowledge that could be shared via twitter or blogs in this setting would be very engaging for my students.

8th grade students in New York were given the assignment to tweet about the book and movie animal farm as they studied those. The students felt that it took a potentially "boring" project and made it more fun. They got deeper insight into the material than if they had just done it by themselves. This assignment could be done for any number of topics or mediums.

A teacher had members of her PLN tweet out clues to her class, and they used various functions of Google Earth (GE) to track them down. Students used twitter (through the teacher's account) to send the results of their searches. The teacher said that this was a great way to introduce students to the tools involved in using GE effectively.

With topics like what is it, who's doing it, why is it significant, where is it going, and what are the future implications for education, this article provides a good primer for someone who is being introduced to PLEs for the first time.

This blog post was written as part of a masters program, and seems to be comprehensive and well done. Lubensky begins by debating some of the merits of what at the time was still an emerging technology. He looks at things that may hold back the effectiveness of PLEs, the potential for the future, and what have been some of the reasons that PLEs are moving to the forefront of discussions in educational theory.

This blog post defines PLEs and discusses how the author feels they are an integral part of how we can and should become lifelong learners.

Wenger defines what makes a CoP different from a group of friends who like some of the same things, people who share the same occupation, or 30-somethings who all like romantic comedies. CoPs must consist of a group of people who pursue a certain focus and help the members obtain more skills/knowledge in the process. He explains where the term came from and various ways in which it is applied today.

The main idea of this article is to explain how and why he and George Seimens offer MOOCs to the world. Downes believes that all learning is about connections made among the learners, just we are the neurological connections that our brains make every second. He does not believe knowledge is acquired or transmitted, but rather experienced. One of his most telling statements is his belief that the process of taking the course is more important than what people may happen to learn from it--which is at the heart of what he believes connectivism is.

Author Sam Gist defines connectivism and explores some of the possible challenges that educators may face in adapting to this into their classrooms. He also highlights skills that may help educators embrace connectivist principles.

Allee uses the term organizational intelligence to describe how CoPs are becoming more prevalent in the modern workforce. He talks about how he has consulted with various multinational companies to help them create CoPs and to get employees at various levels to share their expertise.

As learners, we can learn most, if not best, through our interactions and relationships with others. Co-participation in groups and/or activities are viewed equally as valuable as content delivered in traditional methods. Educators should strive to get students to include themselves in communities to learn through doing.

Connectivism as an educational theory is seen as a valuable tool for gathering knowledge of a subject using modern technological tools. The author feels that the theory of connectivism could benefit from increased empirical study. He feels that connectivism is at its best when it is used to refine and disseminate knowledge rapidly.