Relationships to social learning theories

As I stated in my discussions this week, in our world today, I feel social learning through interacting and networking is a huge step toward an learning environment for growth and meaning. The students of today are much different from those students of the past, myself included. I observe the students and watch they use technology to interact with themselves and their social connections. I have watched my football and hockey players immediately get out of a practice or a game and go to their phones and start texting. I hear my players and students discuss their game play on-line against each other. As educators we need to find a method to use this as a strategy and implement it into are classrooms to create a social yet a instructional learning atmosphere.


Anytime you can put students together to work as a team it will generate a positive environment for learning. With that in mind, you must be fair and keep the intended purpose of these cooperative groups. In other words do not stack the teams. If the lesson for the groups include the use of technology, I find it would be a necessity to divide the teams into small groups, allow them to chose their different roles for the group, and provide them with a lesson that has structure. In the past when I have used cooperative groups I only will allow no more than four students per group. If it a web quest or an on-line assignment it may only have 2-3 students per station.

As I went through the chapter I viewed several ideas on how to implement technology with cooperative groups and I found them quite interesting. Again though, in my school availability is a problem. I have used web quest on several occasions and have used multimedia video assignments, but I really like the idea of my students creating their own web pages. This would be very good assignment for my health and world history class. What a great way for them to work together as a team, using their creativity to develop their own web site, and finally to research and up date it over a long term time period. This should generate a productive social atmosphere with all the student with group sharing their ideas and the other groups looking and try to out do the others sites. This lesson however, must be supportive to the task at hand and have a solid objective.