SOCIAL/COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

By Timothy Niven & Shaun Nguyen

Personal Learning Preference My scores for the Learning Preference Survey

were 3 across the board for Active, Sensing, Visual, and Sequential. I really feel that my Learning preferences will go well with the social and collaborative learning quests. I am generally really flexible when it comes to working with other people, so I think I can collaborate with other people efficiently. As the semester went on, I preferred to learn Visually and Actively when dealing with social and collaborative technologies.

Tim

Personal Learning Preference For the Learning Preference Survey, I

acquired a score of 5 for Visual, a 3 for Sensing, a 1 for Visual, and a 3 for Sequential. I again was pretty skeptical in delving in the Learning Preferences, but to my surprise they are pretty handy and useful to know when you are learning.

Shaun

Group’s thought on Learning Preference

At the end of class, I learned that I really preferred to learn Visually and Actively when working with others. I used to be more open and easy going when it came to learning, but I think that after learning about my learning preference, I prefer to study utilizing them. I think that knowing your learning preference if an important part in learning and it does make a difference in your personal learning success. Knowing your personal learning preference allows you to explore different ways of learning. It could also make your learn quicker and more efficient

Tim

Group’s thought on Learning Preference

My thinking hasn’t changed that much since the beginning of the semester, I am just more aware of my learning style and preference now. I think that knowing your personal learning preference in conjunction with social and collaborative work is important and it does make a difference in whether you succeed or not. Knowing how you work will give you a good gauge in whether you will be efficient working with other people or not.

Shaun

Pathways at the beginning

For this learning quest, I chose the path of the Learning Sage. I was successful in getting a broader knowledge of multiple technologies. Having different pathways is extremely helpful when working collaboratively with other people. If you have people who learn differently, they can bring new ideas to the table. I didn’t really change pathway, but I did decide to explore the other pathways as well. I realized that since I was already working collaboratively already, then exploring the other pathways would go together.

Tim

Pathways at the beginning

For the learning pathway, I decided to follow the Learning Guide pathway. I thought it was really important that you learn with others, especially for this social/collaborative assignment. Also since my partner is a Learning Sage, we can work together and use our different pathways to be better as a team. I did not change my pathway at all. I stuck it out as a Learning Guide all the way through.

Shaun

Summarize

I really feel that being on various social networking sites and interacting with other people was a huge help in helping me understand the various social technologies more. By allowing me to interact with other people, and ask questions I was able to learn more and at a faster rate. Using Social Bookmarking and Social Networking gave me a deeper understanding on how to learn using social technology. I realized that by using Social Bookmarking, I was able to find information that was relevant to the topics I was trying to study. Social Bookmarking saves a lot of time because it allows me to sift through and finder the more important websites. The combination of Social Bookmarking and Social Networking were very excellent in learning with social technologies.

Tim

Summarize

All the social activities were relatively all useful and easy to understand. I enjoyed utilizing all of them. All of the learning technologies allowed me to better understand how to learn and collaborate in a group. The Social Networking activity(s) helped me to get a better understanding of using social networking for learning. I was able to connect with many different people. Getting people’s opinion and thoughts on something is an invaluable piece of information when learning. The Social Bookmarking activities were the best social technology to learn with other. Having people tag and link things for you to see made finding and researching information much simpler.

Shaun

Top Mobile Technology

Social Bookmarking was a technology I utilized quite frequently throughout the semester via del.ic.ious.com. The technology/activity accommodated my visual, active, and sequential learning preferences. I like the fact that I was able to see people tag websites and information that was related to the information I was looking at. And since I am constantly interacting with other people, it makes learning much simpler. Visually, I like the fact that I was on the computer, and the computer presented me the information in an organized web page. Also, it fulfilled my sequential learning preference because a lot of the websites and bookmarks on del.ic.ious connected to what we were learning in the quests.

Tim

Top Mobile Technology

The top social technology I used for this assignment was MMOG’s. This quest accommodated my learning preferences pretty well since I am generally a more active and visual learner. Since I was on the computer a lot and clicking and generally enjoying myself, I found that I was able to pick things up quicker, mainly because I was really interested in the game itself. To be able to enjoy yourself while you’re working is rare, so being able to play while I learn was really cool. The technology accommodates each preference pretty well. Due to the fact that I am mainly a visual and active learner I need to have what I’m doing in front of me and I have to be participating (it’s a little harder for me to grasp things if I’m not participating). Playing the MMOG’s satisfied the requirements for my learning preferences.

Shaun

Synthesize group experience As far as learning is concerned, I was really interested in the mmorpg learning

technology. It was really fun to play games and actually learn something. I did not expect to be playing various role playing games and actually learn something. I was really impressed and surprised at how you could fit learning and fun together. Besides being entertaining, the mmorpg social technology surprised me because you could actually use it as a learning tool. Of all the social learning technologies, I would have to say that the mmorpg technology was the least effective. The reason I think that is because it is too easy to get distracted when you are playing a game. The problem with the mmorpg technology is that you have to keep remembering that this is a game for learning and not just a game for recreational purposes. If I had to pick a social technology that I would like to further explore, then it probably would be social networking. I like connecting with other students and people. It makes learning more interesting because you have the input of hundreds or even thousands more people.

In my opinion, I think that social networking was the best technology that worked with my learning preference. It did a good job of utilizing my active, visual, and sensing learning preferences. Websites such as goodread.com allow you to connect with many people and discuss books with each other. To be able to read and follow the information is extremely useful, just like being able to interact with other people in similar sumhect matter. Tim

Synthesize group experience Though I really enjoyed the MMORPG social learning technology, I found that it

was the least effective of the three social technologies. I feel that because we are playing games, sometimes we miss the point. I really enjoyed using it and I was surprised at the potential of learning through games, but in the end games are still games. You can learn with them, but I think that we as students tend to slack off and just play them for fun instead of using them for their education merits. If I can choose a social technology to further explore, I would again choose the MMORPGs. Technology in our day and age is indeed advanced, but it’s always ever-changing, so with improvements on modern technology, who knows how much more education our games can be. For example, it would be awesome if we could play a game like WoW and still learn something from it.

The social technology that worked best for my learning preferences would be a tie between the MMOGs and the Social Networking technologies. I really like it when an assignment allows me to roam around, but still retain a solid structure in its curriculum. It’s nice to be guided and free at the same time. Both of these technologies were fun to do and they matched my learning preferences. Again, learning is much more of a breeze when you can interact with other people

Shaun

What did you learn in this class?

After this semester, I actually look forward to using many of the other social learning technologies. I will definitely be using the Social Networking and MMORPG social technologies after this class. Social Networking will be really easy to utilize at a job via networking and getting to know other co-workers, but the MMORPG technology will not really be utilized at all in a workspace environment.

I will be definitely utilize the Social Networking and MMORPGs after completing this class. I really enjoyed the social technologies because connecting and interacting with others is always really fun and it makes learning a lot easier. Being able to socialize with other human beings makes using this technology more exciting. I don’t think I will be avoiding any of these technologies after this class due to the fact that all of these technologies are already heavily utilized in today’s society, so there would be no way to ignore or avoid them. Everyone is playing games, “everyone” is on Facebook, and almost everything worth knowing nowadays is always tagged and or bookmarked

Tim

What did you learn in this class?

After this class is finished, I will still be using all of the technologies presented in this class. MMOG’s can’t really be utilized when you are learning at a job, unless they have games you can play which correlate to the same work you are doing. As for Social Networking and Social Bookmarking, I can easily pick up information I don’t know by asking co-workers via Facebook or Linkedin or by checking bookmarks to the topics I need help with aka del.ic.ious.com

I will be utilizing all the technologies I have learned about for non-learning purposes. I already utilize them in my daily life, so it won’t be much of stretch to incorporate them a little more into my daily routine. There wasn’t really a social technology I disliked enough to avoid, but I would say that I would limit my MMORPG intake.

Shaun