Languages, ICT, education

What if we could dramatically improve our thought processes and learning strategies by tapping into the social genius of another? What if a classmate, colleague, or friend could help us recognize and claim our strengths, new habits of thought, and strategies from a perspective that we never imagined by ourselves? As human beings, our survival depends on others. Our ability to cooperate and collaborate has trumped the stress response state of competition within our species and throughout evolution. With a group affiliation to nurture these relationships, we can strengthen and reappraise our own thought processes.

Libraries are reinventing themselves as content becomes more accessible online and their role becomes less about housing tomes and more about connecting learners and constructing knowledge. 

They become a different kind of learning destination when schools reimagine them as open, transparent spaces that invite student communication and collaboration. ...

A fantastic plenary talk by Sugata Mitra at IATEFL 2014 on the future of learning, schools in the cloud, collaborative learning and his "the hole in the wall" project.

Some of the most popular tools that are revolutionizing the educational field and not only are the so called “collaborative learning tools”. A mind mapping tool creates the right context where students can develop their critical thinking, creativity, independent thought process and teamwork skills.

Collaborative reading and digital devices can give students a huge boost in comprehension. How? Take a look at these great tips from Holly Clark.

As more and more organisations invest in social collaboration platforms (and it’s estimated that 75 percent of enterprise-level organizations will do so in 2013), it will be here where collaborative working and collaborative learning will co-exist, as workers use these platforms to continuously share their knowledge and experiences with their team, and other co-workers.

The open nature of MOOCs affects the design of its resources, its activities, and of course the interactions among participants. As far as the design of the course is concerned, the spread of online tools opens up a universe of possibilities …

Encouraging students to reach out to one another to solve problems not only builds collaboration skills but leads to deeper learning and understanding.

Is Social Media Relevant? 
The myth about social media in the classroom is that if you use it, kids will be Tweeting, Facebooking and Snapchatting while you're trying to teach. We still have to focus on the task at hand. Don't mistake social media for socializing. They're different -- just as kids talking as they work in groups or talking while hanging out are different.

Maintained by Margaret Riel, and faculty and cadres from the Masters of Arts in Learning Technologies,
from the Graduate School of Education and Psychology from Pepperdine University

Web 2.0 is the read/write version of the internet; sometimes called the participatory web. We have collected a set of mostly FREE tools that students in the Learning Technologies program found useful.