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This article, which was written for The Electronic Journal for English as a Second Language, discusses the value of teachers being a part of many communities of practice. This enable them to see social media modeled and be more likely to use it in the classroom.

I think what makes this study interesting is the fact that the researchers explored how communication and learning develop in an informal environment like a social network and how that communication can be transferred to the workplace, specifically, professional development. The study references CEO's who have blogs and discusses the idea that blogs can enhance the performance analysis process. The question that it poses is founded in Connectivism in that it attempts to "investigate the relationship between learning and connectedness among members of a social networking site, and to explore qualitatively how members perceive the transfer of learning from the social networking site to their workplace practices and professional development."

Doing my research I found this resource for social networking in education. Now mind you it does not have a specific site or topic except for "educational networking" but it does list hundreds of network sites that can be very useful for an educator to find a specific topic in educational networking.

Since my school and district are very PLC (Professional Learning Community) savvy and it was addressed within this module and a form of PLNs I did some searching and came across this PLC site. It has PLC Blogs/Discussions, Evidence of Effectiveness information and Tool / Resources for educators.

This is the government's take on Communities of Practice, and I included it because like it or not, it impacts many of us on so many levels. The National Education Technology Plan asserts that we need PLC's, and if you have never read this document, it is worth the read. It definitely furthered my knowledge when I read it in EDTECH 501. The bottom line is that because so many students have access to mobile technology, they are able to be a part of social networks. The goal is to harness this power and cultivate collaboration and engaging learning experiences. Its premise is student-centered learning where students are able to make decisions and choices that form their own pathway to learning.

Thanks for including this document. I was impressed to see the progressive views outlined with many strong and important points for changing our education culture. One of the main areas included the need to leverage technology to empower students and shift learning responsibility from teacher to learners. In essence we want to strive to create master learners, where students understand how to evaluate and gain the information they need as life-long learners. The section "Measure what Matters" I especially applauded, as I feel our extreme emphasis on testing is misplaced if we don't make sure the tests and measures are appropriate for what students need to know to be life-long learners. Do standardized tests even have a section about locating information and assessing its validity? This report started out with a short list of recommendations that included, "Be clear in outcomes we seek". I think this is an important point as we strive to embrace and utilize the growing potential of connectivness.

Authors discuss the random, fluid, and brief nature of most social media interactions, noting that these give little opportunity for meaning construction but facilitate information gathering and individual sense-making. The restrictive nature of social media interactions presents opportunities to find new means of utilizing the technology in learning. Circulating knowledge does not generate meaning, but collaboration does, especially on tight time scales. The authors further present and discuss the term, generative learning communities, which appear to be similar to communities of practice.

This is a chapter from a book. It discusses how technology is just a vehicle to help deliver their knowledge. The authors state that a learner can learn from their technologies if they use those technologies to their greatest ability.

29 students of MOOCs were interviewed to explore their engagement in the course.

I thought this was interesting, particularly how they identified motivation, prior MOOC participation and confidence as the key factors associated with active participation. Not everyone is equally equipped to successfully cope/participate in a connectivist course and this needs to be taken into consideration!

This is a case study of a six week MOOC on mobile learning. This case study focuses on connectivist learning inside an open course that is self-organizing. And includes internal diversity, internal redunacny, neighbor interaction and decentralized control.

I love this video. It is short but does a great job connecting all of our ideas. And I love the way it ends…"for now."

How cool that you linked back to this. It was created by one of our class members.

I loved it! I agree it is awesome and just shows how connected our world is.

Point/Counterpoint on Siemen's 8 principles. It appears others have attacked this concept, too, and we get to read what their brains did with the topic.

This article discusses social networking theories and how to build effective e-learning practices in your teaching. EDTECH543 Connectivism