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"Personal learning networks are a great way for educators to get connected with learning opportunities, access professional development resources, and to build camaraderie with other education professionals. Although PLNs have been around for years, in recent years social media has made it possible for these networks to grow exponentially. Now, it's possible to expand and connect your network around the world anytime, anywhere. But how exactly do you go about doing that? Check out our guide to growing your personal learning network with social media, full of more than 30 different tips, ideas, useful resources, and social media tools that can make it all possible."

"First of all, blogging is writing, 21st-century style, plain and simple. Blogging constitutes a massive genre.  It comes in many forms, addresses myriad topics, and can certainly range in quality. For my money (which usually means free), blogging provides the best venue for teaching student writing. As bloggers, young people develop crucial skills with language, tone their critical thinking muscles, and come to understand their relationship to the world."

"Discover how to transform your professional development and become a truly connected educator with user-generated learning! This book shows educators how to enhance their professional learning using practical tools, strategies, and online resources. With beginner-friendly, real-world examples and simple steps to get started, the author shows how to harness information from physical and virtual communities and become a lifelong learner in the digital age."

"This past semester, William Kiker and I (Kelly Wroblewski) applied to be part of a pilot iPad program at our high school.  As members of a small project based  learning community within Austin High School in Austin, TX, we latched on to the ShowMe app pretty quickly."

"The Provost will charge an Open Access Policy and Implementation Committee with policy interpretation and with developing a plan that renders compliance with the policy as convenient for the faculty as possible. The OA Policy and Implementation Committee comprises two members of the Library/Faculty Advisory Board, one member of the General Faculty Academic Services Committee, one member of the library staff, and one representative of GTRC."

"Today, computer science is absent in 95 percent of high schools in the U.S. Yep. Why? Because developing curriculum for these subjects requires time and expertise, and finding the qualified candidates to teach these subjects demands significant capital to lure talented programmers away from high-paying jobs in the private sector.  That's where CodeHS comes in. Founded by Stanford students Zach Galant and Jeremy Keeshin and incubated at StartX and Imagine K12, CodeHS is an online program built for high school students (and teachers) with no previous coding experience that intends to provide an easy and fun way to learn computer science."

Firstly, everything is a trade-off. If you think that your message really requires a certain format, you accept the consequences, and that is the case here. I develop the premise that an individual subject matter expert can create a rich, interactive e-textbook that is competitive with commercial offerings, and at such low cost that it can be offered to students for free or at very little cost.

"When you think social media and careers, LinkedIn may be the first place that comes to mind. I, as well as our recent Inside Online Learning chat participants, continue to recommend LinkedIn as a primary account, but it may be time to expand your online reach with Google+ as your next step."

Colleges following what the company calls the Textbook Zero model would offer a section using open-education alternatives for every required course and elective needed to earn the degree. Lumen is now testing the model with an unnamed community college on the East Coast, and is also looking for colleges interested in applying the model to general-studies and computer-science degrees.

" after two years of development, Mozilla has released Open Badges 1.0, free software that allows for a new way to recognize learning: digital badges."

"Keynote presentation delivered to Simposio Internacional Estado Actual Y Prospectiva De La Educacion Virtual, Bogota, Colombia. Overview of the historical factors leading to the development of massive open online courses, and discussion of what this history can tell us of the sustainability of MOOCs in the future."

Social media is buzzing over apparent sexism in the tech industry after a female developer was fired for allegedly tweeting a picture of two men making jokes at a conference. NBC's Amna Nawaz reports.

But it isn't professional development - at least not in the traditional concept of it. Instead, my PLN is a network of people who care about me. It's where I go in those dark moments where I have wanted to quit. It's where I go when I am excited and want to celebrate. It is far less of a "network" and more of a community. The reality is that teaching is hard. That's the real reason I have a PLN.

The purpose of this document is two-fold: - to offer an online history of the development of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) - to use that history to describe major elements of a MOOC

"More than six million students are currently enrolled in online courses. There are now massive open online courses (MOOCs), in which universities and technology companies partner to design courses for thousands of students. Selingo also discusses how two colleges, the traditional Southern New Hampshire University and the newly developed Western Governors University (see John Gravois, "The College For-profits Should Fear," Washington Monthly, September/October 2011), are experimenting with competency-based online associate's degree programs, in which students are credited as soon as they show mastery of a subject rather than having to spend a set number of hours in class."

"I asked the lead tech  developers of several Cedar Rapids companies what they look for when hiring, and they all responded with, "The applicant's Github [open source] portfolio." Not their GPA. Not their test scores or transcripts. Their what-have-you-done files. The only way a student can have a Github portfolio is if they have a project worth working on, and the only way they can have that is if they've had generative interactions with the greater community; a community who has a plethora of problems worth working on."

First is the idea of raising expectations and raising standards. Another piece: data-driven instruction. Every teacher in our state now spends 90 minutes a week sitting down with five peers to just drill into what the data is telling them about student performance. There's research that says the most effective economic development that a state could make is in early childhood education. We're increasing over a five-year period from 20 to 80 the percentage of high-need kids who are enrolled in preschool. That's a game changer.

"To contend with these annoying developments, teens aren't deleting their Facebook accounts; they're just using them less and less, spending more time on Twitter and Instagram, where conservations are limited to short-form text, links, and simple photos; or Tumblr, which emphasizes content over consolidated user profiles."

After only three months for planning and development, Duke University and Dr. Roger Barr successfully delivered a challenging open online course via Coursera to thousands of students around the world. Lessons learned from this experience have contributed to the strategic goals of Duke's Online Initiatives.