Howard Rheingold discussed the history of people to collaborate as a form of survival of hunger or to protest unfair treatment. People have a basic instinct to work as a group if the group is involved in a topic of self interest that is beneficial to that individual. Rheingold gave an example of the use of Wikipedia across the country for people to interact to come up with solutions to diseases or discuss world disasters solutions.
Due to the hard economic times, people are willing to work in groups by volunteering to help people in need. There is a certain sense to fulfillment when a person is working with someone with the same ideas and views on a certain issue, such as poverty, child abuse, and high rate of under-educated students in low income neighborhoods.
The constructivist perspective supports that learners learn through interaction with others. Learners work together as peers, applying their combined knowledge to the solution of the problem. The dialogue that results from this combined effort provides learners with the opportunity to test and refine their understanding in an ongoing process. Telecommunication technologies easily lend themselves to constructivist principles by providing students with opportunities to communicate with people all over the world, conduct research, discuss issues and work cooperatively. Examples of technologies are goggle docs, skype, and elluminate.
Reference
Tam, M. (2000). Constructivism, Instructional Design, and Technology: Implications for Transforming Distance Learning. Educational Technology & Society, 3 (2), 50-60.
Blog
http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2010/04/50-free-collaboration-tools-that-are.html
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Good statement. People will always work in groups. When you look at jobs and schools people have to work together. We all learn from one another solving problems and coming up solutions. Students now can work together as a group or community more than ever.
ReplyDeleteAlicia
ReplyDeleteYou are right on. I myself find that I am giving more interms of charity, working closer together with my co-worker (we are supporting each other more) and asking my students to participate in a buddy group, wherein they e-mail and call their fellow students when a student miss a day of class, to let them know what we did that day, and generally just to see how their fellow student is doing. Also, from the constructivist perspective I have notice an increase in my students reaching out to each other and forming study groups on their own. The more advanced learner is spending time after school to help the slower learner.
I too see all across the country people coming together to help the less fortunate.