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The Flat Classroom® Project is a global collaborative project that joins together middle and senior high school students. This project is part of the emerging tend in internationally-aware schools to embrace a holistic and constructivist educational approach to work collaboratively with others around the world in order to create students who are competitive and globally-minded.

The website for the speaker at Classroom 20 Live on June 29 2013. Technology and CCSS can be friends.

My Digital Footprint Plan created for EDTECH 543.

Relevant advice for the beginning of a new school year

This link downloads an article by Antonio Calvani from the University of Florence. He gives his take on whether connectivism is a legitimate learning theory or just a re-branding of the traditional three. He comes to the conclusion that digital access requires that we must re-think learning theories based on tools that were un-imaginable when those said theories were created.

Calvani, A. (2009). Connectivism: new paradigm or fascinating pot-pourri?. Journal of E-learning and Knowledge Society, 4(1). This article is a little hard to swallow at times. In what seems to be a love affair for his own writing he denounces, disagrees, and argues against the text Knowing Knowledge, By Siemens. I am all for disagreeing and arguing but not at the expense of the writer's own opinion where he cannot incorporate any research that supports his position. The author argues that many are too quick to adopt "isms" as a new learning theory and web 2.0 buzzword. He seems to jump from Connectivism as an unfinished theory and being incomplete, again though with no research backing up his own opinion and claim. Just when I thought he was done speaking about anything that I could connect with, Mr. Calvani did illicit a head nod. "A wild transfer of Connectivism to school would lead to think that putting students on the net is enough to produce knowledge, thus consolidating that widespread harmful cliché according to which the more technologies we use, anyway we do it, the better it is for learning".(Calvani,) As an alternative viewpoint to Connectivism he does draw some interesting end points, albeit at the sake of providing actual research for his own defense.

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.

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.

The American Pshychology Association reviews the research findings about Game-Based learning. The article also talks about pilot programs that were conducted to explore GBL, links are provided to these studies.

The short article discusses game-based learning and constructivism. It also provides links to scholarly articles about the effectiveness of GBL in education. Several of the articles are available for free from the Boise State Library.

This site has links to historical maps of the US and all states, it's a great resource for social studies standards, especially geography, maps, and changes in communities over time. Of the states I've looked at so far, the oldest map I've found is from Virginia, dating back to 1617.

Project oriented search tool community contributed content

Contains a lot of data regarding the attitudes, perceptions, and use of social networking websites by teachers, administrators, and school librarians.