My Synthesis project on social Learning

1. By Antonio Ugarte

2.  When I first took this class I was not sure what to
expect, but I ended up learning a lot about how I retain
information best and I think I am a better student
because of it. After taking the survey, it told me that I
am a 3 active, 5 sensory, 3 verbal, and 5 sequential. It
told me that I learn the most when I can see what we
are learning and as long as it is in sequential order. I
am a history major and I believe this is why I prefer to
learn sequentially, because most history is taught that
way. I do not think it changed the way I learn but it
was helpful seeing the results. Being able to
understand how I learn best allowed me to understand
the most effective ways I retain information, and
allows me to foster my study habits to my strengths.

3.  At the beginning of class I chose a learning sage
because I wanted to be able to learn how to use
these technologies on my own. From what I got
out of the beginning of the class a learning sage
was more concerned about their own learning, and
I thought this would be more beneficial to myself. I
thought this would be perfect for my style because
I am not very familiar with technology. After this
class, it was better to get a wide range of
technologies instead of choosing just a select few.
It allowed me to see what I liked and investigate it
more deeply later.

4.  My favorite activity was the predict, use and
evaluate. The lectures were good to get a broad
base of what the technology was. But after actually
using certain technologies, it allowed me to get a
better understanding of how it can be effective.
After I evaluated the technology, if I liked it I
would go back and investigate further. Some of the
technologies that I found had potential to be very
beneficial towards my learning. It was interesting
to see the variety of social technologies. One of the
best exercises was the social bookmarking. I
enjoyed it because we were learning about social
technologies, but were also participating in it
throughout the semester.

5.  As I first stated I believe social bookmarking was one of the
most beneficial exercises from this semester. I had never
even heard about it but once I got the hang of it, I began to
search it for different subjects. I even talked about it with
different people and they say they use it for their news. Just
by looking at trending topics, people can see all of the
headlines they need to in one place. It was effective as a
visual learner, because I could see all of the topics that I was
looking for in one place. It allowed me to track what I was
looking for, instead of losing focus and drifting away from
my topic. By searching a certain hash tag, it allowed me to
see everything in one area instead of looking for it in a
scattered way. I like to be organized when I am researching
and this definitely helped. If I were working with a group,
social bookmarking would allow my group to study more
effectively because we could share links that we find in our
topic.

6.  I also liked the section on twitter, I think this will be one of
the major social networking sites that will last in years to
come. It makes viewing topics so easy and accessible, I
know a lot of people that use this technology for their news
and it is very effective. Integrating this into the classroom
because it would make the organization of the class so much
easier. If a teacher could just post when assignments, the
students could follow it on their twitter accounts and make
it easier to remember assignments. I like this technology
because it stimulates my active learning. It allows me to
personally participate in my learning and stay on top of
what I need to. This would also help visual learners because
it allows them to see all of the current trending topics. For
journalism majors, this would be key when thinking about a
story to write about. Just being able to see what people are
interested would be crucial towards their career.

7.  Another important form of social learning is the social
networking site. I have seen many people already starting to
use Facebook for group projects. I had never thought about
it before, but once I started using it, it made perfect sense.
People are on their Facebook accounts a lot of the time
anyway so why not work on projects through there? I began
using it last year for some of my group projects and it
worked great. We could share our work or decide where we
were going to meet without actually talking about it and
everyone would be informed. This was very visual because
it allowed me to see what other people were working within
my group, but also verbal because it made communication
so much easier within my group. If we did not have this site
people could not share their opinions about the work were
doing as easily. This allowed us to talk instantly and it sped
up the work process a lot quicker.

8.  All in all, I enjoyed working with social
technologies because it makes studying and
communicating easier. I believe that technology
should make difficult tasks easier and this is
definitely the case here. The technology that
interested me the most would either be twitter or
social bookmarking. I don’t know if I could
commit enough time to both but I would like to
investigate further. After this class, I might set up a
twitter account because I think it would be the
most beneficial. I was surprised that Facebook or
twitter could be used for educational purposes. I
thought it was interesting to hear teachers talking
about the benefits of using these sites.

9.  I think social bookmarking worked best for my
learning preferences because I could use the hash
tags as a way to organize my studying. Especially
with large assignments, organizing your research
can be a daunting task. This would allow me to see
other people’s links as well as my own when I am
trying to write a paper. It would allow me to go
back to what I had previously read and use more
quotations. This could help me keep track of my
bibliography, which is always an issue. It would
also allow me to stay active when working in a
group. We can share the links that we have been
looking at to stay on top of each other’s work.

10.  I have learned many things this semester but I
have realized the importance of social
technology and how that can foster my
learning and communication between my
group members. If I had a job that needed for
me to organize the group the easiest way
would be to set up a group on facebook. If we
had to look for links about a specific topic I
would use a social bookmark site in order to
share what I have found and see what other
people have found.

11.  Certain social technology, I think I will avoid. The MMOG’s
have never really gotten my attention and after this class
was not any more interested in the topic. I believe that they
are good for some purposes but outside of the classroom I
do not think I could find any real purpose for them. For
non-learning purposes, I will continue to use Facebook
along with the rest of the world. The site keeps changing
and adapting to the outside world so I don’t see why I
would not use it. If I do choose to continue to graduate
school, I might use those study websites when studying for
a test. It is finals week right now, I might use the website
that is a whiteboard on the Internet. I will probably use the
language learning website as well. I plan on going to Spain
this summer and freshening up on my Spanish would help a
lot this summer.