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This was an interesting blog post that essentially asks, is it better to remain uninformed? This is a very real question for the passionate educator. Once one connects in to best practices, it can become increasingly difficult to abide in the current practice of one's own school. As an example, my wife is a nationally board certified teacher, she works in a private school with great resources (her third grade classroom is one to one laptops) , but through fairly poor leadership, the technology largely remains outside the circle of meaningful practice in her school. Her peers largely rejected any thought of instructional transformation, and as a result, her school has essentially provided every student a laptop computer to utilize as a sixth textbook, or a word processor. Being a progressive educator, engaging in professional reading, and attending conferences, can be incredibly frustrating when one understands the possibilities and sees dynamic change occurring elsewhere. It's almost like you are standing outside the gate, seeing the party, but have no means of entering. This might seem like whining, and the comments in the post somewhat bear that out, but it is part of the burden one must assume in working to create change. So, is ignorance bliss? In all honesty, sometimes it can feel so.... ts

If I may... There just may be areas of life about which we are better off not knowing, but I'm not sure. Then again, I'm happy that many hostile biologists do not possess the sequence and the genetic code for the small pox virus. Your addition to this page does raise some interesting questions.

Whenever I read or hear "Ignorance is bliss" I can't help but see thee image of Cypher chomping down on a huge steak in the Matrix. While there are definitely areas in life where mankind should remain ignorant (nobody wants that seventh grader bringing a laser gun to class), teachers being more aware of better practices or what's happening in more technologically advanced schools is one of them. Seeing these new ideas can lead the teacher to ask, "How can I make that work in my classroom even if I don't have everything they have?" At least a passionate educator might. The dispassionate educator probably isn't even utilizing a PLN.

Thanks to Todd for mentioning this Flickr photo in the Voice Thread. What do you think of this visual of PLE as a subset of PLN? Do you think it is accurate? Any suggestions for expanding the diagram?

I choose this article because I'm looking for a discussion of how PLCs and PLEs are different. While I think it may be more about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, this did allow me to read more about how social capital plays a role in PLCs.

A full-featured web site-creation package solely for the academic community. Scholars create web sites in seconds and can easily manage everything themselves (for free)

Glass is a browser add-on that lets you share experiences and not just content.

Lot's of potential for creating learning experiences and very easy to use

Nice! Chris Haskell just shared a similar tool last week (can't recall name, maybe writeon?) that let's you write or drawn on any webpage, as well as make notes. This tool seems to have more advanced social networking features, however.

When I was teaching in the D.C. area, Harry Wong's ideas got me through. Universities really don't teach teachers how to manage an unruly classroom. Studying the ideas of Wong allowed me to exit survival mode and enter teaching mode.

Hi Dennis, curious why you shared this resource in a group called "social network learning?" Do you see a connection somewhere? Thanks.

I thought this was an interesting example of how to use the "list" functionality of Twitter to create a professional learning community for people interested in virtual worlds. Note they recommend Hootsuite and Tweetdeck for organizing your Twitter account. I use both of these and find they help.

The article is a good display of how to use social media in a school. I especially liked the first comment I highlighted because it states plainly what we already know that kids are accessing social media sites, we should move with them and teach them how to use those sites safely and for good purposes. The article goes on to explain about sites that can be used for free that are kid and school friendly like edmodo, edublogs and kidblog.org. The article also offers teacher input from those teachers willing to try social media in their class and the results it produced. I think Elizabeth Delmatoff made a strong case for using and keeping her pilot social media program. I couldn't agree more with the concluding statement, "The teachers and parents who embrace social media say the best way to keep kids safe, online or offline, is to teach them."

This forum is part of a larger site the contains a wealth of forums and literature pertaining to connectivism and other learning theories. It is fun to see Stephen Downes interact with others in a forum setting. I'm hoping to also locate Siemens.

includes connectivism

New Technologies Can Keep You Connected and Help You Manage Information Overload by David Warlick