Week 2: Web 2.0 and Learning

P/S my apologies for the late post.

For learning to occur there has to be a question to think about and content to interact with, and by content I mean credible online sources with which one can reference one’s thoughts or argument to build upon or challenge.

In Web 1.0, content created became very accessible. Then came Web 2.0 technology which allows for people to interact with contents shared; Brown and Adler described it as “a new kind of participatory medium that is ideal for supporting multiple modes of learning.” The affordances of Web 2.0 has made a great impact on social learning, which Brown and Adler described as “understanding of content [that] is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions.”

Prior to Web 2.0 there were some social learning in / outside traditional classrooms but with Web 2.0 more people can now interact in or contribute to a conversation.  Web 2.0 has made possible for the community of learners to have access to more ideas and learning from peers whom you don’t normally hang on with. For example, in a online course I took in Fa’12 where three generations of pedagogy was discussed, I could not understand what connectivism is even after reading the article. For one thing I have never heard of it like I have the social-behavorial and socio-cognitive approach. The instructor gave his take on it but the concept/pracitce was still unclear to me until one student described and explained his reading and understanding of connectivism from another book. That was when I first felt the power of sharing in social learning. This affected me as an instructional designer as I embark on a project to develop an open course in iTunes U. I would push for an open platform to allow the community of learners to discuss and share their thoughts in the learning journey.

Rachel

3 thoughts on “Week 2: Web 2.0 and Learning

  1. eimpagliatelli

    @jmm5032 Thanks for sharing your jigsaw review procedure with the cards! That’s a neat way to randomize jigsaw activities that I’ve never thought of before.

    The idea of social learning or student-constructed learning is frightening to some teachers because it can be difficult to create activities/assignments which engage and motivate the students to stay on task and put forth the effort to follow through and focus on the learning aspect as much as the social. I have created lessons that, when put into action, were completely unsuccessful because the students were focused on being social either because their groups were not created with a purpose or because the students were not interested enough to take the initiative to construct their own learning out of the activity. It can be a challenge for teachers to find appropriate lessons which allow the students to collaborate with one another while not being too social when the teacher is working with another group.

    -Erika

  2. Karen Yarbrough

    I think sometimes people get freaked out by the phrases “student constructed learning” or “social learning” as if it takes the teacher out of the picture completely. I think both your examples of review and inquiry are great options to show that isn’t really the case. It’s about scaffolding from both the instructor and your fellow classmates.

  3. jmm5032

    Learning’s ingredients: purposeful question (or problem) and content. Well summarized. Citing Brown and Adler’s point of the different modes of learning possible via Web 2.0 fleshes out your philosophy of learning to an even greater degree. I liked that you shared your peer-learning experience about constructivism. In my classroom, most of my reviews tap into the power of social learning, as students answer one another’s questions by explaining the material in their own words. For example, I often employ a jigsaw review*. I use cards from two standard fifty-two card decks (each with different colored backs – one red and one blue) to randomize group assignments: everyone with the same number and color of their suite get together. What is not taken into account yet is the colors on the backs of the cards: each group contains a mixture of red-backed cards and blue-backed cards, which factors into the randomization in the second part of the activity which I explain in a moment. Everyone’s first group is called the expert group. Depending on the suite color, students do one side of the review (red side or black side, depending on the suite color of the cards that I used to randomly assign the groups). A little over halfway through the class period, I ding a bell, and students move to their report groups. They move according to the number on the front and the color on the back. This heterogenous group contains some students who completed one side of the review, and some students completed the other side. They explain their work to one another and answer each others’ questions. Because students had three classmates with whom to work in their expert group, they could master the problems on their initial side. Students are also allowed to ask me questions during this phase if their group cannot come up with the answer by themselves. In the second grouping, the report groups, students must be able to answer all questions of their peers for full credit. For this reason, students master the content in the first group and share it like experts in the second group – social learning.

    *Link to a jigsaw review for my honors alg. 2 students:
    https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5WPs6wDQsyeSkRWbkJkcUxtQVk/edit?usp=sharing

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