1) The document discusses the learner taking an online survey that indicated they are an active, visual, and sequential learner. 2) It describes the learner joining multiple guilds at the beginning of class but not being very active in them. They express interest in focusing on multimedia/interactive learning going forward. 3) The learner reflects on trying social bookmarking, microblogs, and social networks this year and how they can benefit different learning styles and help with organizing information. Social networks in particular helped support their active learning preferences. 4) They conclude by acknowledging they did not learn much this term but see potential in social/collaborative learning and hope to do better if they

1. ITEC 299
Social / Collaborative Learning
Blair Nishio

2. Blair Nishio
LEARNING
◦ At the beginning of the class, we took
a survey on which type of learner we
might be. According to the results I am
an active, intuitive, visual, sequential
learner. I received a 7 for active, 8 for
visual, and 3 for sequential To be
honest my thinking about my learning
preferences hasn’t changed that much.
It didn’t help that I did not do many of
the quests. I do know that if I did I
would have learned quite a bit about
myself. I do hope to retake this class in
the fall in order to take advantage of
the lessons you have taught. Knowing
your learning preferences helps one
discover the most effective way of
acquiring knowledge.

3. Blair Nishio
THE PATH
◦ At the beginning of class I joined every
guild offered. I was anxious to see what
each guild was offered. Now that I
check the google+ page, I am not sure if
I really did join the guild. I have a +1
next to the posts on the google + page
but that is the most I did with these. I
was not really sure if you were supposed
to sign up for one guild or multiple
guilds. When I do it all over again in fall
semester I would very much like to
focus on the Multimedia / Interactive
learning. However, all of the subjects
seem to be very interesting, so I may
switch my path several times. Maybe
even joining up for all of them again!

4. Blair Nishio
ACTIVITIES
◦ I took a look at the activities that were offered for the social/ collaborative learning
sections which seemed to be very interesting. One of the sections I looked at for a
while was the social bookmarking section. Before I looked at it in this class I used
to see these sites as a modified search engine used to kill time. This was often the
case with stumbleupon. I then took a look at diigo which was one of the websites
suggested in the activities. I can see the features offered to be very helpful in this
technological age. I often print out a whole page and take notes on them. When it
comes to putting them away and organizing them, I will often forget about the paper
itself and it will get lost in the pile I have made. Diigo and delicious used together
sounds as if it could be very effective.

5. Blair Nishio
3 TECHNOLOGIES
◦ This year I have tried out 3 different social technologies for my learning. I tried out
microblogs, social networks, and social bookmarking websites. I never really thought of
microblogs as being a way to learn. However I thought of how subscriptions helped keep you
up to date with what’s going on in the media world along with friends. I was new to twitter so
I tried to add many of my friends and thought of who I might be interested in the media
world. The twitter world kept me up to date with what was going on directly from the source.
This can help the visual and active learners very much so. The visual learners will see the
most current tweets and the active learners can follow links posted or retweet things which
they may find interesting.
The other Social technology I took a look at was the social network websites. This website
would be very good for those with an active and visual preference. The user would be able to
learn about the subject they are learning. After that they can interact with other users. One of
the websites I have used several times has been livemocha. I have used it to learn French and
Japanese. French has been helpful but Japanese has been quite difficult. The reason Japanese
was hard to learn was because Japanese Kanji is completely different from our alphabet. It
would have have been easier to have the pronunciation next to the Kanji instead of the
symbols alone. Besides this many of the websites were very interesting to take a look at and
quite useful.
The last type of technology was the social bookmarking websites.These types of websites
would be very helpful to those with an active and visual preference. The two websites that
were focused on greatly were the websites: Delicious and Diigo. Delicious is a social
bookmarking website that allows a user to bookmark a certain website and then continue to
tag this bookmark with subjects which it may be relevant to. This bookmark is stored in the
cloud which other people can access and recommend this bookmark to other users. Diigo is
another website where a person can highlight and add annotations to the website. The page
will then be stored on the cloud. The use of the cloud can allow the user to access their
bookmarks and annotations anywhere they have an internet connection and accessible
through multiple devices. These two websites used together can be very effective.

6. Blair Nishio
LOOKING BACK
◦ The social technology used as a learning tool which interested me the most was probably the social networking sites.
I am an active learner that needs to talk my thoughts out with others in order to fully grasp a concept. This is very useful
and there are many social websites out there that can improve my learning for various subjects. The most surprising
social technology would have to be microblogs. I thought that micro such as twitter were used for stalking more than
expanding one’s learning. All of these social technologies seem to have a good use in the field of learning. I have
already taken a look at social networks for learning, but this summer I think I will take a deeper look at the networking
sites available to hopefully give me the motivation I need to become more active.
The Social networking sites would again have to be the winner for the technology which worked best for my
learning preferences. My results from the tests gave me a 7 for active, 8 for visual, and 3 for sequential. Using
Livemocha was very helpful for me. I was interacting with the lessons provided. They gave me images of the items I
was to translate then gave me the pronunciations of each word along with an audio example. These lessons went in a
certain order in order for me to make complete grammatical sentences. This social network was very helpful and was
the best for my learning preference

7. Blair Nishio
THE FUTURE
◦ I have not learned that much this semester
and that was my own fault. I am working
on this in order to achieve an INC. I do see
many interesting things in the social /
collaborative learning sections taking a
look at activities that were put up. I hope to
learn a lot next semester when I can put
aside time to work on this class. Thank you
for the opportunity.
-Blair Nishio