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Great article about integration of tech for early childhood educators

How young is too young for technology? Are children ages three through sixto young to use technology? What forms of technology are better than others for young children?

An educator's blog that writes about how to use technology in the early childhood classroom - great ideas to use with younger children.

Great site for early childhood students learning English. Gives picture and audio and an opportunity to practice the skills.

I saw a reference to MOOCs when I was researching so I wanted to dive deeper into MOOCs (massive open online courses). This article serves as a report card discussing the successes and needed improvements for MOOCs. MOOCs biggest successes seem to be the huge reach they have with their online presence. Millions of people enroll in the courses and top universities, such as Harvard and MIT, have MOOCs. However, some pitfalls are that less than 10% of people who enroll in MOOCs actually finish. The article gives ideas for improving MOOCs mostly based off the belief that online courses can be isolating and more collaboration with actual humans, via chats and videos, need to be included in MOOCs. I found this read interesting because the MOOCs are founded with the connectivism theory in mind, however many of this components that drive connectivsm and communities of practice are lacking.

Jake, I found a resource on MOOCs as well and while it was a positive presentation of them, it also noted some of the pitfalls. The fact that they draw mostly highly educated students, makes me wonder how accessible they are for all people. However, I know they are new and evolving, so it will be interesting to follow their development.

This article was extremely interesting! I was surprised to see the the high percentage of people who sign up for MOOCs and don't finish. I also strongly agree with the comment in the article, "people need people." Thanks for sharing!

This article talks about the early collaboration tools that were available at the time of its publishing and their possible use in medical education. A general background is provided of blogs and podcasts and the article offers advantages and disadvantages to using both.

Educational Success "A large group of early adopters were teachers who haven't always been comfortable using technology in the classroom. Schoology helped them embrace a digital teaching and learning environment in new ways." Kellie Ady District Instructional Technology Coordinator Cherry Creek School District, Colorado

Just ahead of the back-to-school season, Amazon plans to make a major foray into the education technology market for primary and secondary schools, a territory that Apple, Google and Microsoft have heavily staked out. Monday morning, Amazon said that it would introduce an online marketplace with tens of thousands of free lesson plans, worksheets and other instructional materials for teachers in late August or early September.

Authors present communities of practice (CoP) as groups with a common desire for change, as providing opportunities for collaboration and reflection, and as catalysts for development of societal products and tools. They note that CoP transcend traditional barriers/demographics and reach groups formed by individual selection. CoP, while also focused on collaboration and dialogue as well as the development desired outcomes, are more open to sharing with the broader community than other collaborative models. Discussion of use of CoP in context of early childhood intervention.

The author clearly breaks down the benefits of educational software by different age groups beginning at birth through high school. He even gives negative information about using software too early, or using wrong content software for the age.

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

Dr. George Siemens discusses his experiences with connectivism and how it reshaped his perceptions of the relationship between student, teacher, and information. He believes in this newly inter-connected world, knowledge itself becomes even more of a network. Beyond the network connections in the brain, the social networks on the internet have become a new way for people to know, understand, and retain information.

It's hard for me to believe that blogs have been around for more than 15 years ago! He's been blogging since the "late 90s, early 2000s." I appreciate his idea that learning is really a socially connected process because of technology.

Dr. George Siemens offers his backstory on how he came to create the theory of Connectivism and how it really relates to learning. He articulates why Connectivism is different from Constructivism or any other previous theory.

A free, organized collection of educational videos searchable by topic.

Collection of videos - several appropriate for early elementary students. Search by topic.

From the short demos I've watched - this looks promising as a resource. Drawback - it is not free.

This video is a concise overview of what communities of practice are in K-12 education the form of a PowToon. Brought to you by the Institute of Excellence in Early Care and Education.

Introductory video on what Communities of Practice are. It lists benefits of CoPs and where to find more information. Audio is just music, basically, a slideshow turned into a video.

Educational Success "A large group of early adopters were teachers who haven't always been comfortable using technology in the classroom. Schoology helped them embrace a digital teaching and learning environment in new ways." Kellie Ady District Instructional Technology Coordinator Cherry Creek School District, Colorado

Schoology is the LMS I use with my students and has made differentiation and personalization a breeze.

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.

Summary: Communities of Practice are all around us. They exist in most businesses and most professional communities. These communities are important because work is shared, revised, and organized; thus, making it better. The development of CoPs is dependent on leaders within these communities.

The sharing piece seems to be the most integral part CoP in my opinion. Also, before exploring these topics I feel my thinking was streamlined towards education, but I am understanding the need for CoP in all professions. If you are not sharing as a part of the community then you are not a contributor. This translates to the classroom and making sure all students play a role and have a place in the classroom's community! This starts as early as having a classroom "job."