My group chose the social-cultural theory that I presented in class. A lot of that is because I started recruiting people to my theory because I kind of liked a lot of what it said. I chose social-cultural theory mainly because I would like to see if it is possible to design a lesson using it as a model, and if so then what would that be like. Social interactions and cultural interactions are both areas of interest for me. Before I had a kid (and hopefully soon when he gets old enough), I loved to travel. I have been to India, Morocco, France, London, Spain, Jordan, Mexico, Belgium, and a few other places. Sometimes we just showed up with little plans and made our way around with a Lonely Planet book in hand. So seeing how those cultures interacted and formed social structures was an interesting thing to observe once you got off the tourist path. Seeing how those may apply to learning is interesting to me.

So how are we going to approach it? That is a bit more unclear. We are going to look at how to take advantage of social connections that can be formed inside of the existing culture of the Learning Technologies program. The “more knowledgeable others” of current students and faculty will serve as guides to take new students through the zone of proximal development. I know that sounds a little generic, but that is our goal so far. We are thinking that there will be a need for a place to have new students self-reflect, ask questions, see examples, and interact with others in the program. So I am assuming there will be a blogging piece, a social network, a set of webpages, and other tools of that nature. We may even have to look at how students could be placed in loose “cohorts” each semester they begin for peer support. Much of this is up for change since we are just tapping into this idea.

Work division seems to not be happening as well as it needs to. I keep bringing up different ideas for work division, but then everyone points out “I want to contribute to that part, too.” Well, of course we all will contribute to every part, but we need to divide and conquer the initial writing to get something going. Hopefully this issue will resolve itself as we get a clearer idea of what the exact training will look like.

Timeline for completion would seem to follow along with the calendar in class. Are there other options? I like to stay on the schedule that is suggested personally, but I hope that other students want to also. That was a problem I had a lot last semester – always asking my partner to get something done, but he would always say “it’s not big deal.” Well, it was to me to stay on schedule. But the goal I am trying to set is to get the rough draft finished by Monday to get to the peer review group, then get those changes finished in time to get the document turned in for professor review. And then there will be much fear and trembling.

Reading Notes:

Click here to read my notes for this week on Evernote

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