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Communities of Practice are becoming an important focus in organiation development because of the learning and collaboratiave aspects of CoP. Theory and practice of CoP's are reviewed. The model of situated learning is reflected upon as CoP's are viewed as a process of engagement.

This is an article that dives deeper into the theory and practice of communities of practice. The article hits the main components of domain, community, and practice but dives deeper into the thinking of the researchers Lave and Wenger. I appreciated how the article dives deeper into the process of these communities and how many of us join COPs as periphery learners and then as we gain competence through out interactions with the COP we move to full participation. The cornerstone of the theory being that learning not is solely acquisitional but rather a process of social participation. There are extended quotes from the researchers that provide a deeper context to their theory and more is discussed about the processes of their research.

This article provides a great overview of the writings of Wenger and Lave on communities of practice. Their basic points are that we are all involved in communities of practice and they are valuable tools to become better educators. They also explain how our learning never ends as education continues to change. We constantly need to adapt and change our methods to fit our learners.

In this study, professional learning communities were found to increase inquiry and dialogue among participants. Participants who got the most out of the experience were able to explore new ideas and concepts, discuss ways in which those ideas and concepts fit their own paradigms and styles, and then apply and reflect in a supportive environment.

In January 2010, the Department offered a program of free, online conferences to support teacher professional learning. The program of web conferences covered the domains of Literacy, Maths, Science and ICT

This article reviews three PLN platforms: Edmodo, Classroom 2.0, and The Educator's PLN. They describe how teachers use the PLNs for learning, sharing, and communicating.

Personal and professional development resources that integrates with Facebook. Full suite of application training allowing people to teach & learn with friends and colleagues. 

Welcome to the VoiceThread 4 Education wiki. This wiki was started by Colette Cassinelli (http://twitter.com/ccassinelli) but because of contributors like YOU - it has grown to be comprehensive collection of VoiceThread examples from students and teachers of all ages and groups. The purpose of this wiki is to gather examples of how educators are using Voicethread in their classrooms (or for professional development) and to share those examples.

This site has a variety of different EDTECH articles for professional development, I particularly found the different uses of twitter interesting.

I thought that this personal learning network resource was a great fit for our class. This article discusses how schools are using social media to engage students and real-world relevance, for professional development, and school, district, and teacher collaboration. They used Twitter to document and share a paper tower challenge with schools and teachers from all over the world. Twitter was used to connect with experts and students got to see that not all scientists agree on certain topics. They also connected with the community.

I like that this article looks at how Twitter can be used for students and for educators. The idea of Twitter for educators as professional development fits very well with the ideas of COP's and PLN's. While I haven't been a true part yet of a structured Twitter session for PD, I have lurked in many formal PD discussions with hashtags for our public school system and benefitted from what I gleaned.

What an awesome video. It makes me excited to go back in August and really challenge myself to use Twitter or Facebook to showcase my students. Our school district uses a hashtag #bsdpride for teachers to showcase things going on around the district and it's starting to take off. It's awesome that teachers are encouraging each other to use Twitter and begin challenges that involve students. You can tell from this video how important these students feel when their work or projects re used on social media, and are getting attention from other schools.

This article takes the provocative position that a PLN is *not* the best learning situation for all learners. The authors qualify this, however, explaining "when the technology used to support learning is designed to support a specific learning model, this can often lead to a compulsory learning process that users must follow to reach the course objectives." I am not entirely sure this is a bad thing, however; in formal learning situations, I think it makes sense to have clear objectives, assessments, and learning activities. In informal settings--such as personalized professional development for practicing educators, for example--this point might hold true. The authors explain that individuals' epistemological beliefs affect their willingness to learn in an informal (PLN-based) learning situation. Further, the authors believe that beliefs about the role of technology for learning will impact the learning that can occur in a PLN. I really agree with these ideas!

This article on MOOCs brought some interesting things to the forefront. When these courses were new they were touted as having the potential to change the world. In the years since though their hype has gone down. Most people participating have already earned college degrees. On encouraging pattern however is that teachers are often participating in the courses. This could potentially bring big positive changes to teacher professional development.

I enjoy this site because of the wealth of information available to educators. Whether you are interested in professional development or employment in an independent setting, you can discover opportunity here.

This is another resource from Albertson's Library. If you click on the link you will be prompted for your MyBoise login information before being redirected to the article. This article looks at how professional learning networks are developed and why they are successful. It describes how people use their social network to reach out and find the content they are most interested in. It also talks about networked learning being focused on the learner whether the learning is personal, collaborative or collective. It describes the importance of having a far reaching social network to facilitate the learning and how this approach is being adopted by educational institutions.

Teacher resources and professional development across the curriculum. Great interactive activities and lesson plans for all subject areas.