The Connected Learning Project
The website initially opened on June of 2012, for the purpose of conducting and archiving research for the development of a 21st Century model for education. The central purpose of the website to provide a guide for teaching of digital media literacy in a connected learning environment. The website supports ideas of student centered facilitated instruction, that provides for the creation of content through project, problem based learning applications. The current developments of the site include an assortment of activity guides that correlate with the first domain of digital media literacy and the connected learning process. These activity guides are designed to help teachers in their quest for integrating technology tools while blending the standards of required learning with digital media literacy. Future plans for the website will include the principles of facilitated learning as it applies to effective teaching practices in the connected classroom, designing project and problem based units of study to promote creative digital compilations, and to define the practice of learning analytics.
What is Connected Learning?
Provided by Connected Learning Project
Connected learning is learning that is socially connected, awareness-driven, and oriented towards educational and economic opportunity. Taken from multiple sources, the connected learning approach applies to most situations where people are engaged through topics of interest and where they gather to share knowledge. The connected learning model can also apply to teacher growth as well, as individual teachers learn from the establishment of social media networks and personal learning networks. The central focus of connected learning is constructed on the foundations that anytime an individual pursues a deeper understanding of the world around them, he or she can connect to an expert. These are the network resources of individuals who come together to share information, that have the same common passion or purpose to expand knowledge. These are the world of social media gatherers, that aggregate and share like or similar resources.
What is Connected Classroom?
The connected classroom is defined through connected active engagement where student participate in developing their own knowledge resources and publish electronically while under the supervision of a teacher. In the connected classroom, students are at the center of knowledge obtainment. They are linked to the process in engaged activities as they are asked to perform authentic task. These instructional strategies, include being able to facilitate the learning process without influencing student choices. To work along side of the student and being able to oversee the growth and development of students. Teachers who facilitate learning in the connected classroom check student understanding throughout a unit of study, so that students can learn how they are contributing clearly and definitively to their own learning.
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Connected Learning: Designing New Pathways
In order for schools to implement connected learning ideas, educators must be empowered to design the pathways on which they travel purposely. They must be able to move from the present into the future, while continually operating in a way that allows the school system to constantly make advancements and upgrades as technology rapidly changes. According to the Connected Learning Project, "There is wide agreement that we need new models of education, and not simply new models of schooling, but entirely new visions of learning better suited to the increasing complexity, connectivity, and velocity of our new knowledge society. We now have the capability to re-imagine where, when, and how learning takes place."
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Why do we refere to the term ePub Generation?
Media is now moving to real time where individuals move in and out of print base to image base content. Real time material becomes reusable content instantaneously as networks and composition tools provide faster collections of reusable redistributed media. Everyday students and information gatherers are building and sharing resources through the consumption of a free flow of information that replicates new chunks of information within milliseconds. A new generation of social publishers is creating vast warehouses of information, digital content that is merged, and remixed into new forms of conceptual awareness. This is the generation that will need the courses in humanities and digital media literacy to create, publish, and formulate new meanings of the world in which they live, virtually and semantically.
Project Coordinator and Developer
Mike King is a graduate from the University of Oklahoma in Public School Administration and has been a teacher and principal for thirty-three years. Under his tenure, his schools have been recognized as exemplary by the Oklahoma State Department of Education as a Lighthouse Project School and named a National School of Excellence Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education. This success is inseparable from his commitment to advancing learning with technology and his firm belief that digital tools can help students unleash their creativity and construct knowledge. This belief provides the foundation for the Creating the Classrooms without Walls program, in which students participate in a universal learning experience, utilizing mobile tools to continually access and create multidimensional patterns of explanations of the world around them. Mike has been Nationally recognized in his work Digital Media Literacy. He state that, "These are the new digital tools that pave a new way of generating consumable content that has taken on a new course in learning trends.
While serving as principal of Dodge City Middle School, his school has been selected by NASSP as a Regional Breaking Ranks Showcase school. Dodge City Middle school has also been recognized by the Kansas Association of School Administrators as a Gold Standard High Performing School in both math and reading in 2010 as an Exemplary Middle School in 2011 and as a Middle School of the Year Finalist in 2012. Additionally, the school has been recognized by the Kansas State Department of Education as a Standard of Excellence school in both seventh and eighth grade reading.
Mike has been individually recognized as one of the first recipients of the NASSP Digital Principal Award in 2012, named the 2010 KGCT (Kansas Gifted, Talented and Creative) Administrator of the Year, a 2005 finalist for the Oklahoma Medal of Excellence Award in Educational Administration and was a finalist for the 2005 Association of Professional Oklahoma Educators Foundation Award in Educational Administration. In 2012 he was selected as Southwestern Kansas Music Educators Association as Administrator of the Year.
His technical experience has been recognized by the Goddard Foundation for documentary filmmaking, USA Today’s“Best Bet” educational website, and the Oklahoma State Senate for participation in Operation School Net. Mike King has appeared on Fox 25 news and has been featured in publications such as NASSP News Leader, Principal Leadership, Phi Delta Kappan, Education Week, Discovery Education Magazine, LRP Publication Monthly, and The Oklahoma Daily. He has presented workshops for a variety of local, state, and national groups and at both the National Association of Secondary Principals Convention, ISTE Leadership Forum, NASSP National Webinar and at the National Staff Development Council’s annual conference.
He has served as an adjunct professor at the graduate school of education at Oklahoma University and Northwestern Oklahoma State University. He has co-authored several published supplements for his works in “Developing School Programs and Policies” which include: “A Guide to Developing Human Resources”, “Building Bridges of Trust”, “Developing a Safe and Healthy School Environment”, “Developing A Learning School” and “The Virtual Schoolhouse”. His most recent publication on "Digital Storytelling" appeared in the October 2012 edition of Principal Leadership magazine.
While in Oklahoma he served as a member of the Oklahoma State Department of Education School Improvement Team to provide support for schools on improvement and served on the board for the Oklahoma Technology Association. Mike is currently a member of the Board of Directors for the Kansas Association Middle School Administrators, a member of the Kansas Secondary School Principals Association and is an active member of the Kansas Gifted and Talented and Creative. In 2012 he was appointed to the Kansas State Department of Education Accreditation Advisory Board. Mike and his wife Sheralyn currently live in Dodge City Kansas, where he has served for four years as a Middle School principal. (See Digital Portfolio)
While serving as principal of Dodge City Middle School, his school has been selected by NASSP as a Regional Breaking Ranks Showcase school. Dodge City Middle school has also been recognized by the Kansas Association of School Administrators as a Gold Standard High Performing School in both math and reading in 2010 as an Exemplary Middle School in 2011 and as a Middle School of the Year Finalist in 2012. Additionally, the school has been recognized by the Kansas State Department of Education as a Standard of Excellence school in both seventh and eighth grade reading.
Mike has been individually recognized as one of the first recipients of the NASSP Digital Principal Award in 2012, named the 2010 KGCT (Kansas Gifted, Talented and Creative) Administrator of the Year, a 2005 finalist for the Oklahoma Medal of Excellence Award in Educational Administration and was a finalist for the 2005 Association of Professional Oklahoma Educators Foundation Award in Educational Administration. In 2012 he was selected as Southwestern Kansas Music Educators Association as Administrator of the Year.
His technical experience has been recognized by the Goddard Foundation for documentary filmmaking, USA Today’s“Best Bet” educational website, and the Oklahoma State Senate for participation in Operation School Net. Mike King has appeared on Fox 25 news and has been featured in publications such as NASSP News Leader, Principal Leadership, Phi Delta Kappan, Education Week, Discovery Education Magazine, LRP Publication Monthly, and The Oklahoma Daily. He has presented workshops for a variety of local, state, and national groups and at both the National Association of Secondary Principals Convention, ISTE Leadership Forum, NASSP National Webinar and at the National Staff Development Council’s annual conference.
He has served as an adjunct professor at the graduate school of education at Oklahoma University and Northwestern Oklahoma State University. He has co-authored several published supplements for his works in “Developing School Programs and Policies” which include: “A Guide to Developing Human Resources”, “Building Bridges of Trust”, “Developing a Safe and Healthy School Environment”, “Developing A Learning School” and “The Virtual Schoolhouse”. His most recent publication on "Digital Storytelling" appeared in the October 2012 edition of Principal Leadership magazine.
While in Oklahoma he served as a member of the Oklahoma State Department of Education School Improvement Team to provide support for schools on improvement and served on the board for the Oklahoma Technology Association. Mike is currently a member of the Board of Directors for the Kansas Association Middle School Administrators, a member of the Kansas Secondary School Principals Association and is an active member of the Kansas Gifted and Talented and Creative. In 2012 he was appointed to the Kansas State Department of Education Accreditation Advisory Board. Mike and his wife Sheralyn currently live in Dodge City Kansas, where he has served for four years as a Middle School principal. (See Digital Portfolio)