Saturday, October 9, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice
Do you remember having to study for a test and the morning of it you walk into the classroom and sit down next to your desk partner....what did you say? My mind would always be racing with everything I read over the night before and I would say something like, "Social Learning is where students communicate with each other and create things, right?" Looking for that validation, that confirmation of knowing I knew what I was talking about and wasn't a complete moron. And then you would proceed to go back and forth asking each other about this topic and that topic, until the teacher came in and said it was time to put everything away except for a pencil, while secretly hoping and praying that the teacher would say you could use your notes or textbook...Oh yes those were the days.
Cooperative Learning has students interacting together that allows for learning to be enhanced (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn & Malenoski, 2007). Wow that sounds a lot like social learning: students actively engaged in constructing artifacts and communicating with each other (Laureate Education, 2008). So how do these two correlate with one another? Social Learning is a theory and Cooperative Learning is a strategy that can be used for the purpose of social learning.
Above is a picture of examples that technology has provided for us to use for social learning. WOW, that is quite a list! Some of those I have not heard of and am definitely going to have to look into. Look at all of the resources that educators have available to use in their classrooms, and we know that this is no where near all of them or even the ones that have been developed. Technology continues to unveil new things to us. We should be looking at what is available because before you know it, our students are going to be looking for confirmation and validation through these resources.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2008). “Social Learning Theories” [Educational video].
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
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