This document summarizes Blair Nishio's experience taking an ITEC 299 social/collaborative learning class. According to a learning preferences survey, Blair learns best when active and visual. In the class, Blair explored various social technologies including microblogs, social networks, and social bookmarking sites. Blair found social networks most helpful for learning due to their interactive nature. Going forward, Blair plans to continue using social bookmarking and networks for language learning and sharing resources, but will avoid distracting technologies like Facebook.

1. ITEC 299
Social / Collaborative Learning
Blair Nishio

2. Blair Nishio
Learning Preferences
◦ 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. After taking this class, I realized
how important it was to learn according to
your learning preferences. Active and visual
learning showed me that when I see how
something is done or get involved, I seem to
learn and retain material much better. At the
end of the class, I would say, knowing your
learning preferences is very important.

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. I took part in the Social /
Collaborative Learning guild. I feel that I have
gotten a broader/deeper knowledge of these
technologies.

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 put my notes
onto the sheet of paper. 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
◦ In the future I will use the strategies taught in this
guild. In this guild I learned how to use social
bookmarking. I will be able to share interesting
websites that helped my learning with classmates.
Using Diigo I will also be able to leave notes behind
for classmates who may be looking at my bookmarks
left behind in delicious.
◦ The social networks would be very useful in the future
to improve myself in an interesting way. I have been
thinking about taking a foreign language class and
websites such as livemocha can give me a little extra
practice in learning the languages. I could even use
these social networks for a little bit of fun. I think that I
may try out the website, good reads when I have a little
extra time. A technology that I may avoid is the use of
facebook. Facebook provides more distraction than
good when I am trying to focus on school. The social
learning guild was an awesome and interesting guild to
be a part of.