connectivism, educational social networks, model, school project, social interaction, social media in education

Social media, and ICT in general facilitate access to information, encourage its creation and sharing, and not only on the Internet. Connectivism, the latest didactic theory, focuses on the connectivity of sources, establishing relationships, interaction and sharing of knowledge in a constantly forming complex network. However, not all authors have accepted connectivism as the new didactic theory, still thinking of it only as a new approach to the learning process which, at the moment, requires special attention of researchers. That is why an instruction model aimed at cooperative learning was designed. Reflecting the connectivism principles, the instruction model was implemented into education through project instruction of upper primary school students. A partial objective of this activity, apart from verifying the theory in practice, was to encourage the cooperation between students and teachers from partner schools, improve the selected key competencies and integrate new technology into instruction, network technologies and augmented reality technologies in particular. Since student safety is extremely important, especially in primary education, the designed model takes it very seriously. The paper presents the individual stages of the model, both at their theoretical and practical levels. The second part of the paper presents different approaches to implementing the connectivism theory in the elementary school environment, i.e. both in the real-life and virtual environments. This paper is a partial outcome of a complex research project aimed at the implementation of social media into the elementary school environment.