1. Social Synthesis Quest
Adrianne Manhart-Hickey
Jenna Rudzwick

2. Personal Learning Preferences
• At the beginning of this course my scores for the learning preference test were for active, 9, for
senses, 9, for visual, 11 and for sequential was 5. I have learned that the test results were accurate
because I know that I do have a very strong preference for active, senses, and visual learning
techniques. I believe that towards the beginning of the class I was very dependent using an active
and visual style of learning. I found that I was unable to grasp concepts if I was not learning in
either of those two styles. For example I had a hard time if the course was based solely off text and
there were no hands on activities or pictures to refer to.
• After finding out that I had such a strong preference to certain learning styles, I tried to
make myself become more aware and train myself to learn how to learn through different styles
while using the preferences I felt stronger in. Towards the end of the class I began to realize that
only being able to learn a specific way was holding me back in succeeding in other classes. As this
semester evolved I noticed myself getting better at using learning styles such as, sequential
preferences. (Adrianne)
• At the beginning of the class when I first took the learning preferences survey my scores were
reflective: 5, sensory: 3,verbal: 5, and sequential: 3. At the end of the class my thoughts on my
learning preferences have remained relatively the same. I still don’t have a strong preference for
one style over another, and I don’t have too much difficulty in areas of learning that are not my
preferred style. I know I am still a reflective learner because I like to go at my own pace and take
time on my own to think about new information before talking about it. In all of my classes I
benefit from verbal stimulation, by having teachers explaining orally to me directions. (Jenna)

3. Groups thoughts on learning
preferences
• After taking this course, we learned agreat deal about learning preferences and
how different styles of learningaffects how you take in and understand
information. We now are more aware of all the differentstyles of learning and
the things we can do to become a better learner in adifferent style if our own
preference is not an option. For example, in a classroom setting tosimply ask the
teacher if he or she can provide a visual while explainingsomething if we are visual
learners to help us understand the material.
• Knowing about other learningpreferences is very important in our personal
learning success because it isimportant to know where your strengths and
weaknesses are. One reason beingthat you can focus on a hands on learning
activity if that is your strength andbecause you know your specific learning
preference you cannot focus on spendingso much time on preferences that may
not be so beneficial to your preference.Another reason that it is good to be aware
of other learning styles is becauseone may be able to train themselves to become
stronger in another area thatyour professor may prefer and you have no other
option. For example if yourprofessor gives lecture notes verbally then you must
work on your verballearning skills in order to become successful in the course.

4. Learning Pathway
• Learning Pathway I chose was the learning warrior, I choose this pathway because I
wanted to learn more about fewer social technologies rather than know a broad
amount of knowledge on many social technologies. I felt like I really got a deeper
knowledge about screen casting. I learned how to set up a screencast as well as
why a screencast is beneficial. For example screencasting can be helpful for
educators and students. It provides a much more personalized and easy to
understand course when you have a visual much like a classroom, yet at the same
time it allows the students to go at their own pace. I did not change my
pathways because I felt like knowing a more broad sense of knowledge amount
more topics is more difficult for me to grasp the overall concept of each
technology. Rather I could just focus on the ones that I believed to be helpful
throughout my spring2012 courses. (Adrianne)
• I chose learning warrior at the beginning of the class because learning more about
fewer technologies would benefit me in the classroom setting as well as outside of
the classroom. After taking this course I now know way more about social
technologies than I did before and how they can be applied towards learning.
Since we both chose the same pathway, we did the same activities, and therefore
learned the same things. I also did not change my pathway. (Jenna)

5. How The Activities Contributed to Our
Learning Pathways
• The specific activity that helped us to get a broader understanding of how
to use social technology was the podcast activities. We feel like we got a
broad understanding that it is a video that you can subscribe to, to get a
weekly or monthly stream of videos, much like a magazine. However we
still both had questions about podcasts, we were wondering if podcasts
were only used for entertainment purposes? Or can you obtain podcast
for educational purposes? While searching on iTunes we both could only
find podcast for entertainment purposes. The specific activity that helped
us to get a deeper knowledge on a social technology was the
screencasting activity. I learned how to set up a screencast as well as why
a screencast is beneficial. For example screencasting can be helpful for
educators and students. It provides a much more personalized and easy to
understand course when you have a visual much like a classroom, yet at
the same time it allows the students to goat their own pace. The activity
that worked the best for learning with others was the forums within the
social bookmarking activity. It was helpful to hear feedback and opinions
from other students.

6. Top Social Technologies
• Social bookmarking was one of my top social technologies because
it quickly and more efficiently narrowed my searches down to
something that was related to the topic of my preferences. The
main learning preference that social bookmarking accommodated
to was the visual learning style because social bookmarking uses
many visual supports as well as text. (Adrianne)
• I explored social bookmarking for my own learning by
accessing the Delicious site and typing in key phrases to search a
topic of interest. As a sequential learner, using Delicious was helpful
in when it came to categorizing, and locating information
sequentially. In contrast, social book marking sites are not very
good at accommodating my reflective style, because they usual
entail on-the-spot responses with the use of discussions on live-
chats, which instead would be helpful for an active learner. (Jenna)

7. Our Experience Investigating the use
of Different Social Technologies
• Group Investigation of social tech for learning social bookmarking
because it quickly and more efficiently narrowed my searches down
to something that was related to the topic of my preferences. Also
it you can narrow your search even more if you know how to use
the tags properly. We were very surprised to learn that twitter was
considered a learning tool because it is something that we both
thought was only used for social networking. The social technology
that we would want to explore further is delicious because there
are thousands and thousands of useful tags as well as related links,
therefore we believe that delicious would help us on research in our
future careers. The social technologies that worked best for both of
our learning preferences was the visual style of learning and we feel
like when working with social technologies, visual aids are
commonly given on most websites.

8. How We Will Use What We Learned…
• The social learning strategies that we will continue
touse after this course will be using links or article to
see if those linkscould forward our research, through
tags, to other related information about aspecific topic.
This skill can be used in our job fields because we are
bothcommunicative disorder majors and our
supervisors could ask us about a disorderthat we may
be unfamiliar with and we may need to find
information using validlinks or articles to better
educate ourselves. The social technology that wewill
continue using for non-learning purposes would be
twitter and facebook,however we both wish to stop
using these social networks during class.