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Education affects society as a whole; when society fails, education is often to blame; education is a social-sorting tool that affects societies and culture; social networks allow education to take place anywhere

A brief but excellent look at the need for PLN in school.  Give a good description of why teacher's need to be involved as students develop their existing PLN's and why they need to develop their own.

Everyone's network is going to look different. It is more of a process than just being in a room with those you interact with every day. It is an independent function that you need to engage in! We have to create our own PLN so that we can connect with our students who already have one.

Everyone's network is going to look different. It is more of a process than just being in a room with those you interact with every day. It is an independent function that you need to engage in! We have to create our own PLN so that we can connect with our students who already have one.

This article explained what actually is done in a CoP and it helped me to connect it to PLNs and Connectivism. In a CoP, communities of people that have common goals and interests are sharing, collaborating and discussing ideas, solutions, and problems that have to do with their particular interest/goals. Through these interactions, new knowledge is formed and they are able to continue to gain more insight and advance in their endeavors. A CoP is a PLN and uses Connectivist theory to enhance the learning and networking.

Communities develop through a variety of ways. A table is provided with many examples that help to clarify these ways. Some include problem solving, requests for information, seeking experience, reusing assets, and discussing developments. It is very easy to apply these examples to a variety of personal and professional CoPs.

This article really helped to define knowledge in the Connectivist theory. To know something, means that you are able to organize and connect ideas together. The author makes a brilliant point that the more connections you have to the idea, the stronger your knowledge of it is. It also states that it is more important to continue to search for more knowledge and connections than it is to be satisfied with what is currently known.

This article discusses different learning theories. One of the theories was network semantics and connective learning. This section describes what it means to be a network. Then it connects networks to what it means to be connective.

After reading this article I can get my head around how important PLN are and I applied it to my corporate job. Both my peers and the people who report to me connect in many ways.

This article is a good definition of what a community of practice (CoP) is and how they are used. It is not specific to online/social networks but offers good background on how communities are formed and what they are used for. With this general knowledge can be applied to many specific domains such as a personal learning network, a google circle or an anime club.

This webpage from the US Department of Education describes how Communities of Practice can improve education.

SUMMARY: The DOE gets behind CoPs as potential answer for achievement gap and underperforming teachers and leaders. Money, time, and resources were thrown at this initiative to see if online CoPs could become the missing link in the instructional shortcomings. Citing examples of success, one is drawn and intrigued to look further at the project as we are now 2 years later.

Finding and researching CoP sites I came across the Department of Education's answer on the Communities of Practice within education. The Department of Education has added the communities of practice within an initiative called the Investing in Innovation along with a series of other initiatives.

Connectivism vimeo that seems to sum up connectivism into it's major points and areas of application as they pertain to education. Seems to be an excellent culmination... putting a cherry on top if you will of my Connectivism materials search.

Inspiring and awesome. I have been in a classroom for 16 years and feel such new energy in this connected world. Bringing it to my day to day teaching is challenging, but I am trying. With learning becoming 'personal' as it says, where do things that are deemed universally needed (language use, basic math skills) fit into the puzzle? Bigger question- is there any need for a Biology teacher (that's me)? I suppose there is, just not for every student. Exciting to think of how a class of passionate Biology learners would run.

Learning Networks in Practice paper by Stephen Downes regarding personal learning environments, learning in communities, content creation and context.

This article talks about the beginning of the PLN movement in education. It discusses how a good PLN makes use of the WEB 2.0 applications that are out in cyberspace.

This blog post describes the relationship between Lev Vygotsky's idea of the zone of proximal development and Jerome Bruner's concept of scaffolding. The practical applications of connectivism and PLNs are not explored much in this post, but the theoretical connections are valuable.

Hi Jamie, I am a huge fan of the zone of proximal development. I think the application with PLNs is such an interesting concept. I am glad that you connected the theory to the practice. Thanks for sharing.

This video provides an overview of what PLNs are and how they relate to education. The fact that this video relates to education, specifically, is helpful in considering why PLNs are beneficial for teachers. However, the video says it is the first of four in a series, but the other videos cannot be found, which is disappointing if one wants to hear more on the topic.

This is a link to a PDF of a paper that supports the theory that connectivism leads to a new conception of learning in which formal, non-formal, and informal learning should all be integrated to build lifelong learning activities in a "personal learning environment".

I use Evernote frequently for personal and school notes and organization. This is a great site showing how educators are using this tool in classrooms.

Internet Safety blogs, tutorials, protecting your computer, keeping your personal info private

This article gives "real life" examples of connectivism using twitter as a medium.

I'm also taking Global and Cultural Perspectives in Educational Technology this term and this article really relates to the discussions on culture that we are having in that class. It made me realize that in some ways connectivism and the use of social media- i.e. back channeling and tweeting- are a whole new culture to learn and this is why I'm struggling a bit with it.

Great article. Like Nona, it home for me as well. I appreciate how the author uses her own personal experience in the classroom to demonstrate her understanding of social networking. Today, I encourage my students to use their phone to take pics of assignments, tweet info, and access information. Back channeling is a great term!

This article discusses that learning should not be a passive learning dependent on artifacts but should be active learning utilizing evolving data and learning networks. This will provide for an environment to overcome socioeconomic differences.

Hi Daniel! I appreciate that this resource addresses how eLearning and networking can break down the barrier of socioeconomic differences that can really hinder some students' achievement. Thanks for sharing!

This article discusses how e-learning is evolving and learning is now relying on our personal networks Perrsonal learning networks have changed from just family, friends, and those in our section of our class to include many more people with the e-tools and social networks.

A community of practice can be seen through e-learning as groups of people come together to share a common interest, interact with one another and learn.

This is a blog of an expert in Personal Learning Networks. He talks about how his own PLN has developed and changed over his professional career due to the availabilty to make connections with others in far more ways than were possible 20 years ago. He briefly describes many of the connection possibilities on the internet such as social networks, blogs, wikis, etc.

I like the discussion in this article about critical behaviors. I have found that it is challenging at first to follow through on those behaviors. Assignments in our edtech courses help us engage in such behaviors, but the question for me is whether or not I'll keep those habits intact after the courses end. Thanks for the link.

David Warlick discusses the advantages and uses of new social media technologies as key components of growing PLNs. He focuses on synchronous, semi-synchronous, and asynchronous platforms. Asynchronous platforms allow us to domesticate the information landscape as opposed to hunting and gathering pieces of information. "Learners become amplifiers as they engage in reflective and knowledge building activities, connect and reconnect what they learn, add value to existing knowledge and ideas, and then re-issue them back into the network to be captured by others through their PLN."

This is a very useful discussion presented from four community of practice leaders who have share insights based on their experience creating and maintaining COP. Some of the topics discussed include the importance of leadership and support, creating a culture and climate, immediacy and quality in responses, using modeling and examples when starting the community.

Great discussion. I enjoyed that they touched base on how to encourage participation which sometimes could be the number one problem in getting the results a community of practice could produce. To further break this down the discussion focuses on the 90-9-1 rule which states there is one person actively involved in the online presence then 9 every now and againers and 90 lurkers. From there they not only suggest how to encourage participation but how to reward it as well. Overall I enjoyed this article. Great find.

This author is from the Istanbul Kultur University. He reviews and applies connectivism theory research and discusses the methods used within social networking platforms for education purposes. He promotes the idea of the growing need for learning as a connected activity. Since people already use social networking for interacting and communicating personally and professionally, it makes sense that SN platforms be utilized for educational purposes. The author also pointed out a number of challenges in making this a reality. Some of the challenges include lack of training, lack of reliable technology and open access to SN sites, and unreliable information shared on SN sites.