http://klout.com/ - it shows influence, reach and rates your usage of twitter.

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.

This article was written by one of co-authors of the article Eric posted Personal Learning Environments: Challenging the dominant design of educational systems. The key points of this article is that a PLE is made up of more than just software. While it has tools - these could be considered more of problem solvers or strategies. Some of the typical problems that these tools solve are discourse monitoring, micropattern spotting, creating and mixing media and indicating presence of other participants in your personal learning network. In comparison with an LMS which can be static this environment actually can function as an ecosystem. While I have already started on my PLE in bubbl.us, this article is making me rethink how I categorized according to tools. Perhaps, I should be thinking more about how the social network is functioning and what tools best fit the culture of the social network. How do members of the network choose to solve their problems or implement their strategies for their own PLEs?

This article was useful to me because it compares and contrasts the design of a personal learning network with what we would normally see in an learning management system (lms).The key points are that a PLE is goal focused, symmetrical system that allows for the learner to use and create content. If I was explaining the difference between a PLE and LMS to an administrator or instructor that's how I would frame it. It also made me think unlike a static LMS, a PLE has soft boundaries for length of time and number of participants. A PLE does require more planning on the part of learner as there are numerous different learning strategies that can be implemented. So my questions are, what type of strategies could be developed for the new to PLE instructors. Also how do we help adult students who may have always learned from textbooks develop PLE strategies? This really requires further thought and development. Also, while this isn't part of the article, this video seems to do a humorous take on the article premise. YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9zSd5Gs6Mw Chat between a PLE and a LMS.

This article reviews and synthesizes current practices and thoughts on how Web 2.0 allows for participatory/networked learning. It references Gee 2004's affinity spaces, Jenkins et al. 2006's participatory culture and Wenger 1998's communities of practices. I found the author's components of Web 2.0 spaces to be useful especially for whenever I may need to explain the essentials of a social network. These components were listed as presence, modification, user-generated content and social participation. I also found the author's use of the DJ metaphor to explain re-appropriation and remixing of content to be helpful.