Friday, July 16, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Module 3 Blog Post
Humans, in general, are very selfish creatures. By looking at our history, one would conclude that competition is good (chariot races, olympics), greed leads to success (corporate businesses), and war is inevitable (Middle East). These qualities have overshadowed human societies since the beginning of modern time. Therefore, I doubt Howard Rheingold's altruistic view (2005), which alleges that it is basic human instinct to "interact and work as a group." An instinct is something that comes naturally or relfexive if you must, but working together takes work.
I do agree, however, with the fact that survival is one of our basic instincts. If that means we must "interact and work as a group" as Howard Rheingold discussed, then humans will do what it takes to survive. After reflecting on the video, the concepts that "there is strength in numbers," and "it takes a village to raise a child" came to my mind. Both of these represent the benefits of working collaboratively. I then began to ponder the benefits of wolves working together. Although they have to work continually to keeping their pack together, the benefits out weight the consequences of being alone in the wilderness. With this thought in mind, I reexamined Rheingold's concepts and became intrigued about the possibilities that collaboration can provide. With a little help from a friend, maybe, just maybe, there is hope for human kind after all.
How can technology facilitate collaboration among learners based on constructivist principles? "The computer offers an effective means for implementing constructivist strategies that would be difficult to accomplish in other media" (Driscoll, 2005, p.406). In the video, Rheingold examined the benefits of open source platforms and peer-to-peer productions. He pointed out, "…new forms of cooperation enabled by new technologies create new forms of wealth, we may be moving into yet another economic form that is significantly different from previous ones" (Rheingold, 2005). Therefore, collaborative platforms are necessary so collaborative efforts can ensue.
This week our group examined Cloud Computing when we explored the Horizon Report. Cloud Computing allows users to share web-based applications for editing, word-processing, social networking, and media creations (New Media Consortium, 2010). One example of that our group used was Google Docs. This web-based platform allowed our group to effectively communicate, collaborate, and construct our ideas about the effectiveness of a specific emerging technology to solve a current work place problem. The resourcefulness of this type of platform allows learners to collaborate while maintaining the developmental and motivational needs of a constructivist environment.
Driscoll, M.P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston:Pearson Education, Inc.
New Media Consortium. (2010). One Year or Less: Cloud Computing, 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition. Retrieved from http://wp.nmc.org/horizon-k12/chapters/cloud-computing/).
"Howard Rheingold: Way-New Collaboration" http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration.html