Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice

Social Constructivism is defined by Dr. Orey as occurring when students are engaged in constructing artifacts and conversing with others. The active conversation allows the students to concretize and understand the content. Cooperative or Collaborative learning is a prime example of social learning. What I feel is the greatest attribute of this type of learning is that the students are both creating an artifact and engaging with peers at the same time. Construtionism basis its theory on the idea that students learn best when building an external artifact or something they can share with others. Social Constructivism presumes it is best when hands on constructing is combined with the social interactions between peers. Together the idea of collaborative learning brings both of these ideas to the same learning experience. I have always use cooperative learning in my classroom, but after week four and five I can bring new meaning to the importance and effectiveness of this type of learning. As far as technology goes, it has only expanded the possibilities we have to allow students to work together to create meaningful, content rich, external artifacts, that can be not only great learning experiences for them but can be shared with the rest of the class as a way to further the learning experience.