Assignment 13- Part 1

Collaborative Social media learning #1

This post will discuss the collaborative social media learning that we did in class and what I see as some of the pros and cons of it.

Some of the obvious positive aspects of using social media tools are the speed and ease with which they can be used. Social media is all about instantaneous access and real time information. So apposed to many classes where you write a paper and then wait a couple days to turn it in this is instantaneous. The other physical aspect is ease with which one can embed videos and hyperlink websites within posts. Having hyperlinks and YouTube videos embedded in the blog posts makes it extremely convenient apposed to opening up multiple windows and type in different urls.

The next and much larger aspect of social media is that it creates a conversation. In most of my classes the teacher teaches and then I turn in an assignment and I never see my fellow classmates work. Since they never see my work and I never see their work  I am left to believe that everyone did something pretty similar. This class has shown the compete opposite as I have seen that people have very different posts from me with different ideas and conclusions. As a result, I have been learning from my other students rather than simply learning from one source (the teacher) and then regurgitating the information on a paper or test.

This concept is best shown through the comments and comments on comments. In no other class of mine have I received candid feedback on my work from my fellow classmates. Not to discredit any of my professors, but having just their feedback is nowhere near as good as having the diverse opinions of 40 or 50 students who each have a different perspective.

The next post will give some more pros as well as the cons.