SOCIAL/COLLABORATIVE

LEARNINGBy Antonio Ugarte

Personal Learning Preferences

When I first took this class I was not sure what to expect, but I ended up learning a lot about how I retain information best and I think I am a better student because of it. After taking the survey, it told me that I am a 3 active, 5 sensory, 3 verbal, and 5 sequential. It told me that I learn the most when I can see what we are learning and as long as it is in sequential order. I am a history major and I believe this is why I prefer to learn sequentially, because most history is taught that way. I do not think it changed the way I learn but it was helpful seeing the results. Being able to understand how I learn best allowed me to understand the most effective ways I retain information, and allows me to foster my study habits to my strengths.

Learning Pathway

At the beginning of class I chose a learning sage because I wanted to be able to learn how to use these technologies on my own. From what I got out of the beginning of the class a learning sage was more concerned about their own learning, and I thought this would be more beneficial to myself. I thought this would be perfect for my style because I am not very familiar with technology. After this class, it was better to get a wide range of technologies instead of choosing just a select few. It allowed me to see what I liked and investigate it more deeply later.        

Some of the Activities

My favorite activity was the predict, use and evaluate. The lectures were good to get a broad base of what the technology was. But after actually using certain technologies, it allowed me to get a better understanding of how it can be effective. After I evaluated the technology, if I liked it I would go back and investigate further. Some of the technologies that I found had potential to be very beneficial towards my learning. It was interesting to see the variety of social technologies. One of the best exercises was the social bookmarking. I enjoyed it because we were learning about social technologies, but were also participating in it throughout the semester.

Social Bookmarking

As I first stated I believe social bookmarking was one of the most beneficial exercises from this semester. I had never even heard about it but once I got the hang of it, I began to search it for different subjects. I even talked about it with different people and they say they use it for their news. Just by looking at trending topics, people can see all of the headlines they need to in one place. It was effective as a visual learner, because I could see all of the topics that I was looking for in one place. It allowed me to track what I was looking for, instead of losing focus and drifting away from my topic. By searching a certain hash tag, it allowed me to see everything in one area instead of looking for it in a scattered way. I like to be organized when I am researching and this definitely helped. If I were working with a group, social bookmarking would allow my group to study more effectively because we could share links that we find in our topic.

Twitter

I also liked the section on twitter, I think this will be one of the major social networking sites that will last in years to come. It makes viewing topics so easy and accessible, I know a lot of people that use this technology for their news and it is very effective. Integrating this into the classroom because it would make the organization of the class so much easier. If a teacher could just post when assignments, the students could follow it on their twitter accounts and make it easier to remember assignments. I like this technology because it stimulates my active learning. It allows me to personally participate in my learning and stay on top of what I need to. This would also help visual learners because it allows them to see all of the current trending topics. For journalism majors, this would be key when thinking about a story to write about. Just being able to see what people are interested would be crucial towards their career.

Social Networking Sites

Another important form of social learning is the social networking site. I have seen many people already starting to use Facebook for group projects. I had never thought about it before, but once I started using it, it made perfect sense. People are on their Facebook accounts a lot of the time anyway so why not work on projects through there? I began using it last year for some of my group projects and it worked great. We could share our work or decide where we were going to meet without actually talking about it and everyone would be informed. This was very visual because it allowed me to see what other people were working within my group, but also verbal because it made communication so much easier within my group. If we did not have this site people could not share their opinions about the work were doing as easily. This allowed us to talk instantly and it sped up the work process a lot quicker.

My Experience with Social Technology

All in all, I enjoyed working with social technologies because it makes studying and communicating easier. I believe that technology should make difficult tasks easier and this is definitely the case here. The technology that interested me the most would either be twitter or social bookmarking. I don’t know if I could commit enough time to both but I would like to investigate further. After this class, I might set up a twitter account because I think it would be the most beneficial. I was surprised that Facebook or twitter could be used for educational purposes. I thought it was interesting to hear teachers talking about the benefits of using these sites.

Cont.

I think social bookmarking worked best for my learning preferences because I could use the hash tags as a way to organize my studying. Especially with large assignments, organizing your research can be a daunting task. This would allow me to see other people’s links as well as my own when I am trying to write a paper. It would allow me to go back to what I had previously read and use more quotations. This could help me keep track of my bibliography, which is always an issue. It would also allow me to stay active when working in a group. We can share the links that we have been looking at to stay on top of each other’s work.

Applying this after School

I have learned many things this semester but I have realized the importance of social technology and how that can foster my learning and communication between my group members. If I had a job that needed for me to organize the group the easiest way would be to set up a group on facebook. If we had to look for links about a specific topic I would use a social bookmark site in order to share what I have found and see what other people have found.

Applying Cont.

Certain social technology, I think I will avoid. The MMOG’s have never really gotten my attention and after this class was not any more interested in the topic. I believe that they are good for some purposes but outside of the classroom I do not think I could find any real purpose for them. For non-learning purposes, I will continue to use Facebook along with the rest of the world. The site keeps changing and adapting to the outside world so I don’t see why I would not use it. If I do choose to continue to graduate school, I might use those study websites when studying for a test. It is finals week right now, I might use the website that is a whiteboard on the Internet. I will probably use the language learning website as well. I plan on going to Spain this summer and freshening up on my Spanish would help a lot this summer.