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Explore the Connected Learning Alliance site.

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We are educators, researchers, innovators, and change makers. We believe young people deserve a more equitable learning ecosystem centered on their cultures, communities, and interests.We harness the power of emerging technology to help make this happen. Will you join us?

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We are educators, researchers, innovators, and change makers. We believe young people deserve a more equitable learning ecosystem centered on their cultures, communities, and interests.We harness the power of emerging technology to help make this happen.

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Transitioning from Conventional to Connected Teaching: Small Moves and Radical Acts

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I've met and profiled active contributors for years, but Kevin Hodgson has to be one of the most active co-learners I've encountered. He was part of my Twitter personal learning network, but I began to understand how much energy he puts into sharing his knowledge and imagination when we participated in Connected Courses, "a collaborative community of faculty in higher education developing networked, open courses that embody the principles of connected learning and the values of the open web." We had a plan, but part of that plan was what I call "co-learning" - we knew that the learners in this course were also educators, and we knew that they would come up with ideas that the course planners had not thought of. We knew that leaders we had not picked would emerge.

Hodgson, a prolific edublogger and tweeter, started posting " daily connects " - a brief activity, every day, that led the far-flung participants to connect with each other. If you are organizing a course, MOOC, or co-learning community, daily connects are one of the most powerful and yet simple tools at your disposal.

Hodgson is a full-time sixth-grade teacher at William E. Norris Elementary School in Southampton, Massachusetts, and technology liaison with the Western Massachusetts Writing project. He's as prolific as an educator of educators as he is a teacher. When I say Hodgson is prolific, I mean he has a blog for his sixth grade writing workshop as well as his edublog, another blog about teaching middle school, a National Writing Project blog (you'll need to join NWP - not a bad idea if you are interested in stimulating student agency as well as skills), and he was an active contributor to CLMOOC, "a collaborative, knowledge-building and sharing experience open to anyone interested in making, playing and learning together about the educational framework known as Connected Learning." If you want to get started with digital media and learning in middle school, or advance your skills, you could make your own mini-course by just following these links and following Hodgson on Twitter.

Do tune into our video conversation to directly connect with Hodgson's charisma. I asked him how he got started: "Twenty years ago, I was a journalist." (For a more recent example of his journalism about education, see this piece on teacher activism.) "I spent five years as an education reporter, so I visited many classes. I'll never forget one classroom I visited. They had a now-ancient PC in one corner, with fourth graders hovering around it. Their regular science teacher was on a leave of absence, studying butterfly migrations in Costa Rica, sending information back to his students via slow dial-up connection. The kids were so excited. That was a lightbulb moment for me. Although it would take PCs more years to evolve and for network connections to grow faster, I knew at that moment that the right use of this technology would be a game changer."

I think that tuning into Hodgson's video and following his links could be a game changer for many other educators.
Originally Published at dml central

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Practicing the Principles of Connected Learning

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I've met and profiled active contributors for years, but Kevin Hodgson has to be one of the most active co-learners I've encountered.

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From Connected Learning to Connected Teaching: A Necessary Step Forward - DML Central

open web resource

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Practicing the Principles of Connected Learning - DML Central

open web resource

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What happens when middle schoolers take to Twitter? They become learners

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Fully 92 percent of American teenagers go online daily. More than half of them do so several times a day and a quarter are online "almost constantly."

I'm a mother of two teenagers who fall into that latter category. And as a parent and a teacher educator, I work on ways in which we might capitalize on teens' social nature and fondness for technology to promote something positive.

A question I wrestle with is: can social media help students learn? Or is it just wishful thinking?

Over the past decade, my colleagues and I at the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education have worked with hundreds of middle school teachers to integrate technology with meaningful learning. Our research suggests that a one-to-one computing environment, where every student has access to an Internet-accessible device such as a tablet, netbook or laptop, can be a powerful complement to middle-grades teaching practices.

Learning through Twitter

Most research on the use of Twitter for learning has been conducted with undergraduate and graduate students. Research with teenagers, however, has found that students use social media for self-expression, communication, friendship maintenance and information.

So, recently, one of our partner teachers explored the potential of social media to promote learning. Ryan Becker, a teacher at a public middle school, wondered if Twitter might be an effective way to extend classroom learning and to link students to "real world" science.

Working with 128 eighth graders over two years in his physical science classes, Becker first helped each of his students establish a Twitter account specifically for their science learning.

He provided them with a starter list of accounts to follow, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (e.g., @NASA, @SpaceStation, @MarsCuriosity); the radio program Science Friday (@SciFri); Emily Lakdawalla, a science writer and blogger; and @realscientists, a Twitter account that rotates weekly among scientists from diverse branches of science who share interesting details about their lives and their work. He also encouraged students to expand the list of accounts based on their own science-related interests.

Next, students got down to some real work. Both during class and for homework, students were asked to read and tweet regularly about science. They posted pictures and videos to illustrate scientific concepts, such as "acceleration" or "friction."

Ryan Becker, CC BY

They tweeted about their learning, posting personal examples of Newton's First Law and summarizing chemistry in a mere 140 characters. They tweeted about class projects in order to generate ideas or update others on their progress. And they used Twitter to inspire each other, such as posting videos of successful Rube Goldberg machines, a device that performs a simple task in a complicated fashion, when they were building similar machines in class and sharing their own personal connections and observations.

Based on this Twitter project with middle schoolers and Becker's subsequent doctoral research with high school students, we found students learned through Twitter in multiple ways.

How Twitter helped students

First, selecting whom to follow based on their own interests helped to personalize the curriculum for students - an approach that is gaining rapid momentum through recent philanthropic and federal funding efforts.

Second, by tweeting about their daily science learning, students found an immediate and potentially unlimited audience for their tweets. Students who were interested in space, for example, could be followed by classmates or an astronomer. They could tweet questions directly to accounts covering missions throughout our solar system.

In almost all cases, the tweets reached a larger audience than was otherwise possible in a classroom.

Ryan Becker, CC BY

Third, using Twitter expanded students' literacy opportunities. For example, most of the tweets students encountered included links to science-related, informational text, such as blogs and research studies, all of which were related to students' self-identified interests.

Having to distill their own learning into tweets also called for students to use concise language to convey complex ideas, a challenging skill for many. They even integrated different writing genres into their work, such as these sci-kus (haikus that are science-related).

Finally, Twitter served as an assessment tool. Although the research design didn't enable us to measure student learning, we were struck by how well students' tweets provided quick insight into students' understandings and misconceptions.

Because tweets are sent and received instantaneously, students' thoughts and questions could be viewed in real time. Learning how well students were understanding the latest science concepts in turn helped their teacher adjust how and what he taught next.

An earlier study by California State University researcher Carol VanVooren and middle school teacher Corey Bess showed that the use of Twitter helps improve student learning. In that study the researchers found that when teachers used Twitter to reinforce classroom instruction, students performed better on standardized tests.

Challenges of Twitter-based learning

Despite this promising evidence, our research on using Twitter with middle and high school students revealed a number of challenges.

For example, most students in Becker's classroom did not have Twitter accounts, which was not surprising given that most teens favor Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat as their top social media platforms. Students needed guidance on how to structure a tweet and how to assess the reliability of content - both tasks that took time during the school day. Valuable learning time was also eaten up by the undependable nature of technology, such as inconsistent Wi-Fi and inadequate bandwidth.

Overall, however, our research found the benefits of Twitter far outweighed the drawbacks. Embracing Twitter as part of class - as opposed to teaching the type of stand-alone social media unit so often found in schools - helped students grapple with many of these issues in an authentic way.

Two years of survey data from the 128 eighth graders revealed that over 90 percent of students felt Twitter enabled them to follow real science in real time and to interact with others outside of class. This also helped them to make connections between science and their lives and personal interests.

Clearly, we need a lot more research on the use of social media in middle and high schools to better understand its ultimate potential for promoting learning. But in the meantime, in this media-saturated era, teens can benefit from the opportunity to experience the power of promising digital technologies alongside knowledgeable adults.

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What happens when middle schoolers take to Twitter? They become learners

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Fully 92 percent of American teenagers go online daily. More than half of them do so several times a day and a quarter are online "almost constantly." I'm a mother of two teenagers who fall into that latter category.

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Connected learning quadrant model
by Mandy Lupton

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Connected learning in higher education involves connecting learners, experts, networks and information in open systems. A rationale for connected learning in higher education is exemplified in the predictions of the 2014 Higher Education Horizon Report. It is seen in the ubiquity of social media for developing learning communities and for content creation, interaction, engagment, sharing and curating. It is seen in the development of more sophisticated approaches to online and blended learning, and in the use of learning analytics and adaptive learning capabilities.

Connected learning as a pedagogical approach moves beyond closed learning environments to open learning environments. Higher education has traditionally been a closed learning environment where interactions have been confined to student-to-student and student-to-teacher. An open learning environment is where the student interacts with the world, and the world with the student. This is achieved via social media and engagement with open interest-based learning communities, such as those I describe here.

Connected learning curriculum design incorporates use of closed and open content and communities where appropriate. It is useful to think of this as a continuum from less connected to more connected. I have developed a connected learning quadrant model to assist curriculum designers to analyse existing course design and use as a basis for course development. The structure of the quadrant considers open and closed content and open and closed communities:
Content:
Open content is freely available (i.e. not restricted by authentication or a pay wall). It includes open educational resources such as those available on YouTube, iTunesU, Khan Academy, blogs, open digital repositories and open journals. Open content is also created by students in a connected learning environment and shared via social media. Closed content is restricted behind authentication and pay walls such as traditional academic journals, library databases and learning management systems.
Community:
Open communities are those seen in open interest-based communities such as Q&A forums (e.g. Stack Exchange, Source Forge, listserves), expert collaboration and feedback (e.g. Github, Code Academy, Hackathon) and professional communities anyone can request or subscribe to join (e.g. those on Google Communities, Facebook groups, Linkedin groups, Twitter# and listserves) and MOOCs. Closed communities are those restricted to a particular cohort such as a university class (e.g. specific class Google Community and Facebook group, learning management systems).

The benefits of connected learning include:

Engagement with authentic information environments (participatory professional and interest-based communities)

Engagement in authentic information & knowledge building practices (liking, rating, sharing, following, curating, commenting, creating)

The risks of connected learning include:

Managing students' digital footprint and digital reputation

Teaching staff & students how to use unfamiliar tools or familiar tools in new ways

Tension between university sanctioned and supported learning environments (such as learning management systems) and open learning environments

Failure due to the above

Curriculum designers in higher education can use my connected learning quadrant model to make decisions on the level of connectedness they formally use in designing courses. Students can use it to create their own personal learning network and learning pathways regardless of the design of their formal university courses.

I have trialled using this model to audit my own courses for their level of connectedness and to work with my colleagues in auditing their courses.I have found that at the very least, using the model is a way of opening up a conversation on curriculum design that questions the assumptions underpinning traditional university curricular. In my experience high connectedness in course design brings a higher risk, but also higher rewards in terms of students' learning outcomes and engagement. Please feel free to use the model, and to comment on ways it can be improved or refined 🙂

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Connected learning in higher education involves connecting learners, experts, networks and information in open systems. A rationale for connected learning in higher education is exemplified in the predictions of the 2014 Higher Education Horizon Report. It is seen in the ubiquity of social media for developing learning communities and for content creation, interaction, engagment, sharing and...

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DML Connected Learning publications

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Connected learning 'in the wild'

by Mandy Lupton

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One of the primary forces in higher education is the development of global open learning networks and resources. It is now possible to connect learners 'in the wild' via social media to professional learning communities and open educational resources, and for learners to engage in structured study via MOOCs. Learners are able to follow their own interests and structure their own learning pathways. They can use social media to create and share their work and the development of their thinking.

By contrast, higher education has generally been bound by closed systems. Learning pathways are structured by course and unit designers sometimes in conjunction with industry accreditation requirements. Readings are accessible via subscription databases and library materials. Class groups communicate with one another via learning management systems. Assessment is usually a communication between the individual student and the assignment marker.

Connected learning is a pedagogical approach that connects people, networks and information. Connected learning empowers students to develop personal learning networks by interacting with real world, authentic learning environments ( Educause 2013). It is production-centred and interest-driven, where students create, curate and share the results of their learning to a wider audience ( Ito et al 2013).

A key element of connected learning involves participating in professional communities via social media. Some professional communities are hosted on Linkedin, Google Communities, Facebook groups and Twitter hashtags while others take the form of listservs and forums. Examples of specific professional communities include:

Engagement with open online professional learning communities can be integrated into activities and assessment tasks. For instance, students can curate and share information found on the learning communities. They can analyse the discussion and information in the communities to identify issues and themes relating to professional practice and knowledge in their field. They can contribute to the learning community by uploading, posting and commenting.

The production-centred aspect of connected learning mirrors the shift from consumption (Web 1.0) to creation (Web 2.0). In a Web 2.0 environment social media is used to create, curate and share content. Students can upload video content to YouTube or Vimeo, audio to Soundcloud, images to Deviant Art and Flickr and text to WordPress and Tumblr. They can curate information using tools such as Pinterest and Scoopit. Many of these social media platforms are sophisticated participatory communities that allow students' work to be shared, critiqued and promoted. For example, Deviant Art is an online exhibition and gallery space where artists can build a fan base, communicate and collaborate with other artists, and market and sell their work, while Soundcloud "enables sound creators to upload, record, promote and share their originally-created sounds". Many of these platforms enable content and people to be liked/rated, followed, shared and curated via social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest.

The range of high quality online professional learning communities also enables personalised connected learning. Personalised learning involves individualisation, customisation and differentiation, for instance where learning is customised from a number of options, where learning is differentiated to addresses the learning needs of individual students, where the student manages their own learning and where the student creates their own Personal Learning Network (PLN). For instance, students learning programming could create their own learning pathway by learning to code in Codecademy, taking a MOOC in programming, participating in Q&A at Stack Overflow, sharing and collaborating on Github, and creating and publishing in Sourceforge.

The challenge for higher education is the tension between open and closed networks and resources that is occurring at all areas of higher education, including research, publishing, teaching, community engagement, policy, marketing and promotion. A real-world approach to curriculum should involve embracing social media and online professional environments 'in the wild' for more powerful, authentic, connected learning.

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Connected Learning 'in the wild': connecting learners, experts, networks and information through open systems

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One of the primary forces in higher education is the development of global open learning networks and resources. It is now possible to connect learners 'in the wild' via social media to professional learning communities and open educational resources, and for learners to engage in structured study via MOOCs.

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Connected learning for the curious - podcast

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Podcast (tihe_podcast): Play in new window | Download | Embed

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Laura Gogia shares about connected learning on this week's Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Quotes from the episode

The most important part of [connected learning] is helping others understand the connections between all the different aspects of their life.
-Laura Gogia

It's not a tool-first [mentality] ... it's which tool matches up with what I'm trying to achieve.
-Laura Gogia

Assessment becomes about documenting [the] process of learning.
-Laura Gogia

Resources Mentioned

Bonni mistakenly attributed this Twitter analysis tool to being introduced by Robert Talbert on the TIHE Slack channel, but it was actually Ken Bauer who shared it.

Recommendations

Bonni

Laura

Are You Enjoying the Show?

Rate/review the show. Please consider rating or leaving a review for the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast on whatever service you use to listen to it on ( iTunes, Stitcher, etc.). It is the best way to help others discover the show.

Give feedback. As always, I welcome suggestions for future topics or guests.

Subscribe. If you have yet to subscribe to the weekly update, you can receive a single email each week with the show notes (including all the links we talk about on the episode), as well as an article on either teaching or productivity.

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Connected Learning for the Curious - Teaching in Higher Ed

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Laura Gogia shares about connected learning on this week's Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode The most important part of [connected learning] is helping others understand the connections between all the different aspects of their life. -Laura Gogia It's not a tool-first [mentality] ...

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Crowdsourcing the Curriculum: A MOOC for Personalized, Connected Learning | EDUCAUSE

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Connected Learning for the Curious - a response and infographic

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Connected Learning for the Curious - a response and infographic

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Yesterday I tuned in to the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episode which features Laura Gogia. Laura is an inspirational advocate and expert in connected learning, having recently graduated with her PhD investigating the "(potential) role of digital annotations* in edu-blogging and tweeting assessment."

I really enjoyed listening to her podcast, which reinforced many of my own understandings and beliefs about connected learning, but also provided insights into some different perspectives as well. I have summarised the podcast in the form of an infographic (multimodal literacy!) and include it here for you, however I do also encourage you to take time to listen to the podcast in full. Clicking on the image of the infographic will give you access to a high resolution PDF version of the infographic, which might be easier to read, and definitely easier to print should you wish.

I have blogged before about the amazing connective powers of the PLN, and as my research is focusing on how teachers experience professional learning through their PLN, I am finding Laura's work to be extremely interesting!

Please scroll below the infographic, for a selection of useful related resources that are either referenced in the podcast, or that I have personally found to be relevant and helpful.

Useful resources:
Laura Gogia's webpage Julian Sefton Green's blog The Connected Learning Research Network The Connected Learning Alliance

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Connected Learning for the Curious: A podcast by Laura Gogia

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Yesterday I tuned in to the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episode which features Laura Gogia. Laura is an inspirational advocate and expert in connected learning, having recently graduated with her PhD investigating the "(potential) role of digital annotations* in edu-blogging and tweeting assessment."

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Mimi Ito presents her most recent research on Connected Learning with many practical examples.

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Keynote - Connected Learning with Mimi Ito

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A shorter video, speaking directly to educators and librarians of how they can support opportunities for young people to access connected learning.

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linking stretching amplifying weekly tutorial