Week 2 Reflection

Week 2 of ICTs for learning design required us to post a personal refection about the learning facilitated in the Mobile Phones wiki on the CQUniversity Moodle website. With this personal reflection we had to break it down and analyse it within the context of the learning theories which we summarised in last week's blog (Week 1 Reflection). I have chosen to use only two of the learning theories; constructivism and connectivism as I thought these were most relevant to the wiki. 

Constructivism: The wiki on moblie phones was primarily constructivism in design. Learning was founded upon social interactions between peers (learning/expert community), which in this case helped us to extend our own learning/opinions on mobile phones in education through other classmates' opinions on the issue. Through these social interactions we widened our knowledge base on the issue of mobile phones in education, which lead us as the learner to reach a zone of proximal development. 

Connectivism: Sees learning as the process of creating connections and elaborating a network (Siemens, 2004). Which in this case was what took place in the mobile phones wiki. An initial opinion was placed by students then other peers added information with this process continuing. This allowed the students to learn more than their current state of knowing through connections of other students in the wiki. Some key principles of connectivism which we utilised in the mobile phone wiki were; 

• Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
• Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
• Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known.
• Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
• Decision-making is itself a learning process.

(Siemens, 2004)

The benefits of participating in a wiki like this is that it broadens your personal knowledge and opinion on the issue at hand. Potential issues includes peers or students not engaging in the wiki. I personally found it did widen my perspective on the issue of mobile phones in education. I think this form of learning is foundation for students as it strongly utilises two learning theories which stimulates knowledge beyond what the student would know without the help/interactions of others.  

References

Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm