Chapter 6: Community building and Collaborating with Technologies

Howland, J. L., Jonassen, D., & Marra, R. M . (2012). Meaningful Learning with Technology (4 ed.). Boston: Pearson Education.

It has been a while since I have re-read our unit textbook. Chapter 6 on Community Building and Collaborating with technologies I felt would be of great knowledge for this particular unit, being a group task. This chapter talks about 'Wiki's' being an 'effective collaborative tool for constructing knowledge'(p.137). 

This chapter introduces technology tools that supports collaborative projects, and describes how wiki's can be of benefit to learning communities in K-12 education. It also points out the disadvantage to the use of Wiki's.

Figure 6.3 and 6.4 are good examples of how wiki's can and have been used within the classroom to engage in a collaborative environment. It has made me realise that for Task 3 as students we are using our teacher wiki resource as a 'learning tool for collaborating, designing, co-constructing and representing our knowledge'(p.140).

Some collaborative projects that I intend to view and refer to when considering our project are:

-Telegarden- example of internet-based collaborative task that stupports learning outcomes in science. Students are required to tend to a living garden.
-Save the Turtles- example of a collaborative writing example for students (chapter 7 p.183)
-Cyber Fair project is a project example on Global Schoolhouse.
-ThinkQuest is an example of a online learning environment for primary and secondary students.