Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice

The rabbinical saying "Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time." Sums up today’s education system more so than any other generations. With the advent on the computer, cell phones, the Internet, and etc students today grew up in a much different technological world. If you have a question you can google it or text someone to find out. We as teachers need to use technology which our students relate to so well and use it in the classroom as a motivational tool. Our students already are using social learning technology (Facebook, Myspace, Blogs, etc) and need to be actively engaged to learn best. Social learning is great because it has students learn and interact with each other gathering social skills, technology skills, and content knowledge. Some social learning practices I found interesting in the learning resources are Moodle, website creation, and web-enabled multiplier simulation games.

Moodle is freeware online classroom much like Backboard. I create a moodle classroom site for all of my classes because it is a great program. It is especially helpful in a journalism class I taught. It made it so we had an online classroom where students could post their ideas and stories. Then our copy editors proof read the articles and reposted them in their final draft. Then the layout editor could take the articles, pictures, and games off the moodle site and put them in the layout of the paper. Using moodle made for a great experience because we could all see what everyone else was doing, give suggestions, and work together. Moodle is also a great application for tests, quizes, polls, discussions, glossaries, etc.

Having students in small groups create websites or Wiki’s about a topic provides a deeper understanding of the subject than writing a 5 page double spaced typed paper about it. The example in Mrs. Cox’s classroom where students researched a city, created a tourism website for that city, and than contacted that city’s Chamber of Commerce to ask for feedback. ( Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). This project sounds like it would be a great way for students to work together on a meaningful project that has a real world application feel to it because you are interacting with the real city.

Web-enabled multiplier simulation games I had never truly had put them together in my head in an educational setting. They do provide for an excellent social interaction experience. I actually found it quite interesting because I’ve been playing Civilization III off and on this week and in the reading it’s mentioned as a great web-enabled multiplier simulation game. It is and teaches history, famous people, alliances, and diplomacy, trade, and working with others. Games like this that encourage working together and learning should be used more in the classroom.

Marzano, R.J., Pickering, D. J., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: Assocciation of Supervision and Curriculum Development.