Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

effective use of powerpoint

In this article by middle school teacher Stephanie Pinkin discusses the way the Internet and Web 2.0 tools have changed education during the course of her career.

Provides tips for engaging college students on social media, including creating hashtags for individual courses and collecting course feedback in real time.

George Siemens discusses connectivism and the importance that it will play in the future of education. He says that connections are more important than networks. He calls for a restructuring of the education system away from organized courses into open courses where learners explore and adapt connections to suit their own purposes.

I've seen this video previously and thought that Siemens has a great way of articulating what he's thinking and explaining connectivism. He has also done a Ted Talk that is engaging as well.

A new chapter in Tony Bates' open source textbook, this one dealing with COPs - what they are, designing effective ones and learning through them.

@Terrence. I too liked the comments section which is ironically appropriate seeing that the article was about communities of practice. I think that Downes is viewed as a kind of expert in connectivism and social learning. I have read a few things on his blog through the process of this research and they are quite good. He also co-teaches an MOOC on connectivism with Siemens through the University of Manitoba.

I found this interesting at the end when the questions were posted. It made me think of things that I hadn't yet....Can we force these communities or do they just happen naturally and do I think they can replace other forms of education. I have not sorted those out in my own mind yet but I like that they stopped me to think about.

This article examines two communities of practice within a post-secondary online course. One CoP was an on-campus cohort formed by the instructors and instructional designers, the other was an online cohort in which the CoPs were selected by students in the program. This explored the role of teacher leadership in the "school ecology".

Teachers are developing PLNs to connect with other educators and professionals all over the world to stay up to date on their teaching methods and resources. This article gives an overview of why many teachers belong to a PLN and why it is beneficial to their professional goals. I appreciated that the author named and discussed three popular PLNs that I plan on looking into further. They were Classroom 2.0, Edmodo, and The Educator's PLN. I agree with the author completely when he states that "teachers are lifelong learners." This article is a great read for those new to PLNs.

I loved all of the information on the various tools that can used in managing a PLN, There were several tools I wasn't familiar with and look forward to being able to use in the future.

I found this post to be extremely informative regarding how teachers can use PLNs for learning, moreover for modeling learning for their students. The social network portion of this article was authentic to the purpose of this course and aided in making connections regarding the usage of social networks for educational learning tasks. The review of the three PLNs was also helpful as we navigate this course and begin to implement strategies and plans for the incorporation of social networking into our own classrooms.

In this article Mark McBride, a librarian at Buffalo State College, discusses the recent changes that he made to his information literacy course. He talks about how he incorporated constructivist principles and problem-based learning activities into his course structure. In the process of making these changes, however, he discovered that he is really incorporating connectivism into his classroom. He makes the case that librarians should begin to adopt connectivist principles when teaching information literacy concepts. Additionally, he acknowledges that if librarians are going to move in the direction of the connectivist theory, the Association of College and Research Libraries must take a look at its information literacy standards and update them to acknowledge the ways in which learners can share and create information through the use of social media.

A personal learning environment (PLE) describes the components that make up the educational platforms that a learner uses to achieve educational goals. While an LMS is considered course-centric, a PLE is, thus, learner-centric. An open network learning environment (ONLE) can help bridge the gap between a PLE and LMS. ONLEs encourage social networking collaboration. This article demonstrates that online courses that are built within various Web 2.0 resources drive students to create unique PLEs within ONLEs, and ultimately to become "global digital citizens."

In this article faculty and graduate students at the University of Plymouth wrote about the growing use of blogging in higher education classrooms. The authors see connectivism as the theory that helps to legitimize the use of blogging in the teaching and learning environment. They acknowledge that Web 2.0 tools such as blogs give students the ability to easily make connections with their peers and others outside the classroom walls. One of the most interesting aspects of the article was that the authors advocated for the use of course blogs rather than individual blogs for the simple fact that it promotes a single platform for students to share and connect. The authors gathered much of the information for this article from a case study that they did with university students. They asked several students to complete a survey. Instead of a survey, the staff involved in the project were interviewed. Through this case study, the authors were able to produce both qualitative and quantitative data on the use of blogs. Overall, the results showed that blogs are an acceptable medium for using the connectivist model and that by and large, most students achieved the learning goals while completing the assignment.

Kelly, This is a very interesting article especially since I have had to use blogs for many courses and have considered having my own students use them as well. I definitely understand having a single platform, but I wonder if that takes away from the individuality students gain from getting to create their own.

Tiffany, I too am torn on the use of a single platform in the classroom. I love that it would be easier to manage one account rather than individual student accounts. I have over 100 Spanish 3 students (which doesn't include my Sociology and Spanish 2 classes). It could be a nightmare to monitor appropriate blog use of all of those students. At the same time, I agree that students lose the ability to create a personal site, and could be less engaged on the single platform.

Yale University uses YouTube as a means of delivering and differentiating information presentations.

At West Virginia University, Dr. Nicholas Bowman uses social media to continue course discussions outside of regular class times.

This site gives a good overview of how some teachers are using pinterest, facebook, and twitter in the classroom. As well as blogs and traditional email.

Interesting read on how to use Social Media to advance online training programs. Excellent resources on how to improve training systems through social media.

Very cool! I never thought of this as a community of practice. I use this everyday for conferencing with my colleges. We come together through this technology to share resources, plan and organize, and to develop strategies. So, of course this is a great example. Thank you for sharing!

This study looked at how Twitter-using educators were using Twitter to collaborate, network, or engage in professional development

Molly, I really enjoyed this article. It is especially relevant with this course. Honestly, I could never image using Twitter as any kind of professional resource, but after reading this and using Twitter for this class and one other, I can see how it would benefit educator to collaborate. It is also very easy to use. Thank you for sharing this article!

Hi Molly, This is very appropriate for our class, especially since we are using Twitter to share articles and resources with each other - - in our own personal learning environment. I focused on the discussion portion of this article. I noticed that for educators, personal learning networks are important and useful for professional development. It was interesting that the study found greater use in high school environments (maybe because we are influenced by our students?). The benefits of Twitter and professional development, is that one can access and participate at any time and any location - - it is self-directed! I would be interested in finding out how to promote this type of professional development within a school. What type of training is needed for educators to get started? How would one track satisfaction and learning?

This professor discusses how her class was better organized using a blog to generate comments, questions and collaboration. I enjoyed this particular article because it brought to life this idea of chunking a course by adding a blog element during the class. This is particularly meaningful to block teachers that may have students for 90 minutes. It is a great way to break things up.

Rolin Moe provides explanations and skepticism about connetivism, its history and role in education. I anticipate he will help define what MOOCs are, how they are used, what they provide learners, and the outcomes of connectivism as he completes his doctorate and continues in the field.

I really like how the author questioned collectivism as a learning theory, I am not saying he is right, but that it offers other insights I hadn't been considering. Good post!

Rolin Moe discusses whether connectivism is truly a new and singularly applicable theory of learning, or if it is merely an appendage to earlier theories such as constructivism.

This reports the results of a survey of students about using instant messaging in an asynchronous distance learning course in library science. The students came to believe that instant messaging was not appropriate for class related learning, but it was shown to have developed relationships between classmates and to have successfully simulated the types of informal relationships that occur in brick and mortar classrooms. These type of relationship can help build PLNs.

Summary: Although the paper identifies three challenges to Connectivist Learning (self-directed, presence and critical literacies) the findings, based on Kop's research, suggest that social networked learning does work. The paper includes students responses, both positive and negative, about their learning experiences. I found that aspect of the paper fascinating.

This paper highlights current theories of learning and gives a critical analysis of connectivism ""within the context of its predecessors" in a attempt to establish whether this theory is indeed anything new to offer for teaching and learning in the digital era.

This article looks at the challenges that could be faced by using PLEs and Connectivisim in social networking. The article breaks down the challenges to Connectivist learning and then explains the research methodology behind their findings.

This is a link to an audio/visual presentation given by George Siemens on connectivism. The entire presentation takes about 15 min, but you can navigate to specific areas using the menu on the left sidebar. In this presentation he explores what connectivism is and our needs/desires as humans to create meaningful connections. This is a great resource for the auditory or visual learner that doesn't require endless reading!

An audio presentation on this topic is a great resource! I saw several YouTube videos I thought were nice for overviews but I like that this is from the "founder" of connectivism.

What a find! I love having information via audio or visual presentations and the combination is even better. Siemens does (of course) such a nice job of explaining connectivism-making it super clear for me to develop a clear understanding. I also appreciate the navigation menu as I wanted to go back to certain sections. Thanks so much for sharing this resource @kristiedtech