I believe in today’s society humans see the benefits of working in groups. The instinct to work together goes back many years from hunter coming together to literacy bringing people together with religion, politics, and knowledge (Rheingold, 2008). The sharing of knowledge with other individuals and organizations can increase knowledge and growth within one’s own organization. Humans have discovered the process of achievement can be longer when they do not working as a team. Cooperation in the form of collaboration has made a different in learning efforts and continues to emerge with technology.
Learning is a social activity which is one of the learning principles of constructivist that gives an enormous opportunity for the use of technology. Learning has been link to interaction with others. The use of blogs, chats, wikis, discussion boards, video, podcasting, and instant message applications with video such as Skype are good technology tools for facilitating collaboration because of interaction. The listed collaboration tools support conversation and interaction which is key elements of the constructivist principle learning is a social activity. Educational technology is available, but all users are not comfortable with the technology and do not use to the fullest extent. Abbit (2010) noted wikis were used and view as “presentation and dissemination tool” while e-mail was a preferred communication for collaboration (p. 12). In another case study wikis were shown to have the ability to collaborate with a large audience across different time zones. The Web 2.0 features of wikis give the read and write ability which is a vital part of collaboration (Olliges, 2010, p. 79).
References
Abbitt, J. (2010). A case study investigation of student use of technology tools in a collaborative learning project. Journal of Technology Integration in the Classroom, 2(1), 5-14. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Olliges, R. (2010). Wikis and collaboration: are they a mix?. Journal of Philosophy & History of Education, 6077-80. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Rheingold, H. (2008, February). Howard Rheingold on collaboration [VODCAST]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration.html
Hi Sullis
ReplyDeleteI agree that technology has made a tremendous impact on society. I believe that one of the main goals,in the future, of education will be to train students to be able to fully utilize technology.
Gary Allen
Hello Sullus,
ReplyDeleteWhat's your personal take on the use of wikis? I love the Lee Lefever's Wikis in Plain English from the Common craft show explanation of the benefits of a wiki. http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english
But just today I saw another example of a Blog being used to distribute files that to me would be better served through a wiki vehicle and not just a static list of files.
Oh well,
Sharmaine