Daniel took a learning preferences assessment and found he is strongly visually oriented with high scores in visual and sequential learning. He explored using social networking like Twitter to collaborate with classmates, asking questions to TAs. Screencasts also helped him learn new software by tapping into his visual learning. Games surprised him as a learning tool by making memorization fun. Overall, social networking helped the most by facilitating real-time collaboration, and he will continue using social tools that support his visual learning style.

1. Social Learning Synthesis
Daniel Cagley

2. Learning Preference:
• In the beginning of this course I found out my learning
preferences. I was a was a Ref=4, Sen=9, Vis=11, and Seq=3.
Clearly I am very skewed toward visual learning and have
realized this throughout my high school and collegiate life. I
function extremely well when a professor uses a
powerpoint or video to teach a subject. Now that we are at
the end of the semester, I have been able to see how my
scores have played out with my learning ability – I would
have to conclude that they are fairly accurate. However I
have really tried to work on my sequential ability. I have
been trying to break situations down into their smaller
parts to try to understand the bigger picture
Daniel Cagley

3. Learning Pathway:
• I started out as a learning sage because I wanted
to discover new technologies, but as I became
more familiar with them, I changed my pathway
to warrior. I did this because I wanted to know
more about how to use specific ones rather than
learning a little about a lot. I wanted to know
more about how to use social networking sites
about how to collaborate and study with
classmates and TA’s– more specifically by using
twitter
Daniel Cagley

4. Activity Contribution:
• By diving deeper into social networking and broadening my
knowledge of how I could use it to help my education, and
not just procrastinate, I was able to connect with other
students and study with them more effectively. For
example, I used twitter to connect with my classmates in
my Linguistics class and also enlisted the TA’s usernames. I
was able to tweet the TA’s with questions and ‘#’ my class
name so other users could follow it to see the answer to
the questions. It worked remarkable effectively because
before we were using email to ask questions, and this form
of communication required ‘cc’ everyone – most times
people would be forgotten or the conversation would
remain private!
Daniel Cagley

5. Social Technologies Exploration:
• The first technology, as stated above, I explored was social
networking. Web services such as twitter just seemed like a huge
distractions before this course but it has found a place in my
education after exploring it in this quest. Social networking was
most effective because it played into my visual learning preference.
I was able to focus my questions with the TA’s by using certain hash-
tags for our different exams and papers. The layout of twitter
visually makes it extremely easy to navigate and search for
information. By searching hashtags I was able to find the
information and study questions and answers for my exams. Twitter
turned out to be a great tool to help my sequential learning as well.
I would accumulate a lot of different information and organize it,
then reference it for later studying.
Daniel Cagley

6. Social Technologies Exploration Cont:
The screencasts quest was able to teach me almost
everything I needed to know about how to use it to aid my
learning. I have a background in video production, so using
screencasts was extremely fun and intuitive for me.
Furthermore, being a visual learner, screencasts turned out
to be a great tool to help me learn about EVERYTHIHNG.
After my introduction to this technology I explored it to
learn how to use computer programs more effectively. No
longer did I have to read through Windows help and try to
figure out how to navigate a program on my computer –
OneNote 2007. Instead my visual learning preference was
tapped into, and I used a screencast to help me understand
how to sync my OneNote files to my phone.
Daniel Cagley

7. Social Technologies Exploration Cont:
I had always thought of games of something that I used to
procrastinate and waist time, and never thought I could use
it willingly to help me learn at SF State. I realized through
the games quest that I could use games to help me
memorize and understand different topics for my major.
Even though I am not much of an active learner, I quickly
have realized the potential that games can have as a
learning tool. The game can be simple or complex, but
making studying or learning a topic fun can have a huge
impact on how well I retained the knowledge. For example,
I used a memory game to help me study for an exam for my
CJ class. This game turned out to be a great way to get
actively engaged in learning the material.
Daniel Cagley

8. Synthesis:
• In the beginning of the semester I had be extremely interested of how I
can reuse technologies I already have to help me learn. I was most familiar
with social networking sites and I knew that somehow I could use my
connections with my groups, friends, and community to study and
collaborate effectively. I will definitely continue to use social networking
outside of this class. Email seems like it is the communication technology
of the past and doesn’t facilitate the quick responsiveness and the ability
to collaborate with many people that we desire today. The technology that
surprised me the most were screencasts. I did not fully understand what
they were or their potential to help me learn about how to solve problems
on my computer. The technology I do not think works well is MMO’s.
However I will still explore other games as potential learning tools, but I
have yet to find a website that can tailor games to my needs. I believe that
games are a great option looking forward because they help the user to
stay engaged and have fun while learning.
Daniel Cagley

9. Synthesis Cont:
• As stated above, social networking helped the most.
Being able to communicate real-time with classmates
the night before an exam was extremely helpful. I was
able to talk to multiple people at once and we were
able to collaborate on twitter. By having the twitter app
on our phones were able to ask questions and provide
input 24/7. Because I am visual learning I was able to
navigate twitter extremely effectively, then try and
enlist my sequential abilities to organize and reflect on
the information my classmates had given.
Daniel Cagley

10. Looking Forward:
• This course has introduced me to great
educational social tools, and many of them have
played into my visual learning preference. I will
continue to practice my sequential and reflective
skills after this course because I believe that they
can aid my visual preference. Working at In-N-Out
I believe that I can use my sequential learning
strategy to break down the parts of a position
and perfect those small parts to help me get
better at the position as a whole.
Daniel Cagley

11. Looking Forward Cont:
• This course has taught me a lot about many different
social technologies that I can use to help me in my
academic life. For example, I can use screencasts,
games, and social networking to help me connect with
other students who have similar questions and topics I
do. I think that because social networking is here for
the long term, website like facebook and twitter will be
used most for continuing my learning. I work at a
fastfood restaurant, so social networking for learning
seems like a stretch, but using games can be a great
way to help people learn the different systems.
Daniel Cagley