Group items tagged

I chose to use Art Education to examine an open and a closed PLC. The open was a social network learning community I have mentioned before- Art Snacks

Open source social network.

Eduglu helps learners connect with one another and form learning communities. Eduglu provides online spaces for groups to learn together. Our social learning platform ships with a number of powerful social learning applications including discussion boards with full email integration (like Google Groups), polls, wikis, and many more. And because it's built on the powerful open source CMS Drupal, creating your own custom learning tools is easy. With Eduglu, it will become extremely easy for anyone to share information throughout your organization. Your learners will use it to post insights, point to good content, ask questions, and tell their fellow learners what they're working on, what they're seeing, and what they're learning.

Open Course through Athabasca University

As an online 9-12 teacher and parent of three teenagers, I know that the majority of students have Facebook accounts and spend time each day socializing through this technology median. I have often accused Facebook as being a distraction from homework and "real socializing". This article helps me rethink the use of Facebook. The old adage comes to mind, "If you can't beat them, join them". I loved the practical suggestions this paper brings forth, such as making my own "Teacher Profile" that they can keep as a friend. Through this means, students will be able to chat with me about homework whenever we are online, as well as visit my page for useful resources. Sure we can introduce other software programs to provide these teacher interaction services to students such as e-mail, Moodle and Pronto, but why not work with a program they already know and love...In addition, the topic of Facebook profiles and postings can also provide "meaningful" classroom discussions about ethics and self dignity. Thank you, Amy Brown for putting this resource together.

When I first started using Facebook, I was determined to keep it exclusively made up of my real friends. I was living abroad at the time so it was a great way to stay in touch with friends. As it gained in popularity I started getting requests from students which, even though I primarily teach adults, I ignored out of a sense of professionalism. Eventually I did friend a few students who I considered actual friends and that opened the floodgates to friend requests from every student. I felt obligated to accept them and before long I couldn't use Facebook without second-guessing everything I posted and worrying about what my friends might post. I only used Facebook as an email alternative for a few years before I became confident in the privacy settings and once again felt comfortable that I really was only socializing with my friends and not also every student, distant relative and elementary school classmate I had ever had. I think the moral of the story is that instead of using Facebook as the One True Social Network, it's better to have smaller, more specialized social networks for different purposes, such as an EduBlog set up for one individual class.

John you bring up really good points. I share the same concerns and try not to accept every friend request I receive or offer friendship just because I recognize a name.

I compared the differences between and open and closed PLC. From what I found having a closed membership gives the PLC to be more subject specific and a little more in depth with their topics.