Final Project example webpage

http://www.psychexchange.co.uk/resources/viewall/7681/

The webpage I chose this week to share is PsychExchange. PsychExchange is similar to what many of us are hoping to produce for our final project. Obviously this is specific to my subject matter but there are many ideas that all of us can use from this page. It is set up like a Ning or wiki page and can provide some direction for those of us attempting to produce a PLC for our specific subject matter teachers. PsychExchange offers many professional growth opportunities, such as blogs, discussions, events, and teaching activities that can be beneficial to psychology teachers. My final project is going to look similar to this but aimed for a PLC of high school psychology teachers. Some of what is offered at this webpage would be more geared for college courses than high school.

Something that I would like to attempt to figure out is how to create a profile of each member that would include folders containing all the information that person has shared. If you click on the top commenters you will see what I would hope to do. Anyone with any knowledge of how to do this on Ning I would appreciate the help.

Schomig and the Final Project 2-10-10

http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/virtualwkshp/virtualwkshp005.shtml

As part of the final project I have been exploring many online learning communities, this is a webpage that has a number of articles that relate to building your own educational online learning community. Unfortunately some of these links are no longer in operation but enough of them are to be beneficial.

This is an interesting article that includes a questionnaire that determines if your group is just that a group of people or is you a team or learning community. I thought this might be helpful for us as we create our own online learning community in determining if it meets the questionnaire criteria.

http://www.nsdc.org/members/tools/tools11-05.pdf

The final article that I will include is for teachers and setting up a professional learning community. This article discusses why it is important to create a learning community at the high school level and gives suggestions as to how to go about creating this teacher/professional learning community.

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/educationupclose.phtml/50

Schomig and the Group think

http://moneywatch.bnet.com/career-advice/blog/other-8-hours/is-social-networking-bad-for-you/136/

While reading the book I ran across a small section about "group think" and the internet, this is a topic I teach about in social psychology so it instantly caught my interest. Group think is when a group pressures others within the group to conform to the group belief, many times people will do this so that they don't become the outsider. I instantly was thinking that people within an online community would act much the opposite, that they would be more likely to stand-up for their ideals because they are not face-to-face, but I do see how this could also still work the opposite way. This article that I have posted talks about the methods that can be used by an individual to avoid falling into the online group think mentality, so that their ideas and creativity are not held back.

Ning in Education

http://education.ning.com/

This is a place that I have used to come up with ideas for a ning page I have been working on. Some good ideas. The webpage that I have chosen mimics the ideas that are in the beginning readings of our second book. This page gives ideas about how to create an online learning community. I have found items on this page that relate to the six dispositions of a learning community. The one that stands out most for me is a post that talked about having courage and not being afraid to try things on the ning blog. This website is dedicated to educator’s production of a Ning webpage, the Pallof and Pratt book starts with the thoughts of how to produce a learning community with technology based resources. I feel this is a great page for helping us to overcome the questions associated with new technology.

I'm hoping that I am doing this correctly, I wasn't sure if I post here and it goes to google. reader or not.

Here is a webpage that discusses team teaching and the learning community.

http://centennial.osd.wednet.edu/media/centennial/collaborative_team_teaching.pdf

Mike, what are you teaching tomorrow. James said that he was curious.

WNHS cohort

Welcome to all Cohort participants.