Khanh CaoDaniel Cagley15 May 2012

Note: Daniel is in the red writing, I am in the blue writing, and the group is in black writing.

Describe your personal learning preferences (1 paragraph, 100-150 words for each team member) - Answer EACH of the following questions:

At the beginning of the class, what were your scores when you first took the learning preferences survey?

At the end of the class, how has your thinking changed about your learning preferences?

At the beginning of the semester, I took the learning preferences survey. My scores were visual (11), sensing (11), sequential (7), and active (5). By the end of the class, I would say that my thinking about my learning preferences is the same. Not much has changed about me as a learner. I did take into consideration what the learning preferences told me, but I have always understood myself as a learner. I am a very visual person. I like when professors have visual aids or powerpoints. It’s hard to pay attention in lecture when they only speak and don’t write on the board. I am more prone to active preferences because I like doing hands on things. I would rather go and do something myself to learn about it then just read an instruction sheet about it. (Word count : 138)

At the beginning of the semester I was shocked by how accurate the scores were on the learning preferences survey. I was a Ref=4, Sen=9, Vis=11, and Seq=3. I have always felt I was a visual learner and the quiz confirmed that. I realized that I was not much of a sequential learner and noticed it was something I needed to work on. As the semester has wore on I have realized that my visual learning preference has really come into play. Knowing about my different learning preferences has made a difference in how I approach my learning in other classes. I now realize that I am skewed preferably toward visual learning and always need to write down the lectures so that I can see them and study them.

Summarize your group's thoughts about learning preferences (1 paragraph, 100-150 words) - Answer the following questions (Show how each person contributed to the answers):

At the end of the class, how has your thinking changed about learning preferences overall?

Does knowing about learning preferences make a difference in your personal learning success?

At the end of the class, our thinking has not changed about learning preferences. We think that the learning preferences are a great way for some students to recognize what their strengths and weaknesses are. However, for both of us the learning preferences didn’t tell us anything we already didn’t know about ourselves. We are both visual learners and always have been. Knowing about learning preferences has not made a different in our personal learning success. We can only attribute that to our own drive to do well in school and overcoming obstacles in our

way. To us, it doesn’t matter what our learning preferences are because you can’t always choose your professors or classes. I think a better way to help students would be enabling them to overcome obstacles that hinder their learning preferences.

(Word Count: 135)

Describe the learning pathway you chose at the beginning of the class (1 paragraph, 100-200 words for each team member)

Which learning pathway did you choose at the beginning of the class? Were you successful in getting a broader knowledge of mobile technologies (Learning Sage), a deeper knowledge of mobile technologies (Learning Warrior), or opportunities to use mobile technologies to learn with others (Learning Guide)?

Did you change your pathway? Why?

I chose the Learning warrior pathway. I chose this because I feel that in able to become a guide or a sage, I would have to have a deeper understanding of the mobile technologies before helping others. I think by the end of the class, I did have a better knowledge of the various mobile technologies that can be used in an educational environment. I wanted to better my performance this semester. I think of the mobile technologies, I used my smart phone, my ipad, and texting the most. I didn’t use clickers this semester because I didn’t have a class that was big enough. The mobile technologies are probably the ones that I am most comfortable with. I use them every day of my life. Things such as blogs are more for entertainment purposes. I never changed my pathway because I wanted to better myself. Also, even though there were tons of forums I didn’t know anyone in class besides my boyfriend so it’s hard to be a guide or a sage for people you do not know. That is why I prefer in class interaction. It allows you to get to know fellow students and communicate better.

(Word Count: 199)

At the beginning of the semester the learning pathway I chose was sage for a broader knowledge of mobile technologies. I really wanted to know about all of the different technologies that existed and how best to use them for my specific learning needs. As time went on and I discovered more about ipads and tablets and microblogs, I changed my pathway to warrior because I became extremely interested in these technologies and wanted to know how I could use them to get better grades and graduate! The activity that worked the best was when I had to use my ipad for taking notes in class instead of using a traditional paper and pen. I discovered that I could be much more organized and take more notes in class.

Summarize how the activities you completed contributed or did not contribute to your learning pathway (1 paragraph, 100-200 words as a group)

Which specific activities helped you get a broader understanding of how to use a mobile technology to learn? How did they help?

Which specific activities helped you get a deeper understanding of how to use a mobile technology to learn? How did they help?

Which specific activities worked best for learning with others to use mobile technologies?

For this class, I think the most helpful activities were the form entries. They gave new suggestions of ways to use our iPads. They helped because they gave us different ideas of applications to use. We were both pleasantly surprised when we saw apps like Evernote on there. I never knew that there were so many learning apps for the iPad. I always saw it as more of an entertainment purpose. They helped us explore our options. The note-taking apps helped us organize our notes. Once again, the specific activity that helped us get a deeper understanding of how to use a mobile technology was probably the form entries. They allowed us to try new applications and see if they applied to our learning preferences. Honestly, we hated the delicious.com bookmarks. We never received credit for sharing our links and the links did not help us throughout this course. The forums worked best for learning with others to use mobile technologies. This allowed us to share our ideas with one another.

(Word count: 171)

Using one or two paragraphs each, describe the top mobile technologies you explored for learning (1-2  paragraphs, 100-150 words each for each team member)

Name a mobile Technology Quest and how you explored it for your own learning. How well do you think the mobile technology accommodates one or more of your learning preferences? Which preferences? How does the mobile technology accommodate each preference? (Don't just say "I'm a visual learner, so it helped me to see it." That's not good enough.)

The mobile technology Quest that I explored the most for my own learning was the iPads and tablets. I think that this mobile technology accommodates a lot of my learning preferences, but the one it applies to the most is my visual learning. I cannot function without physically seeing what I am learning. The visual aspect of my learning is insane because I sometimes have a photographic memory. Visually, the ipad was able to lay out all the materials I needed for my classes. The applications that I downloaded for learning allowed me to be interactive which played into my active learning preference. As for my sensual learning preference, I think that the iPad was able to play into my senses. I was able use the iPad and touch the surface and move things around. I was able to type with my attachable keyboard. Honestly, the iPad just completely changed my learning experience. I feel that it enabled me to use many resources all in one convenient location. I have been marked down before for the convenience of the iPad. However, I don’t learn well at a library and it is pretty cool when I am able to open pdfs or books onto my ipad. One quest that I didn’t enjoy was podcasts. They didn’t help me at all.

The microblogging quest was extremely useful as a quest. I explored microblogging by finding popular sites and searching them for my interests. At first I started out searching motorcycles and my Yamaha R6, but as I began to dive deeper into the sites, I realized that I could search them for communities of people who have similar interests. By using microbloggs I was able to get

links to videos and other forums where I could communicate and see how different motorcycle riders had maintained and upgraded their R6’s. I could also post my own feedback and blog about what I was doing and planned to do to my bike. This quest helped me to learn a lot and gave me connections to seek people’s help when I needed advice about my motorcycle.

Synthesize your group's experience investigating the use of different mobile technologies for learning (2 paragraphs, 100-150 words each as a group)

PARAGRAPH: Which mobile technologies interested you the most as learning tools? Which mobile technologies surprised you the most as learning tools? Which mobile technologies do not seem to work as learning tools? What mobile technologies do you want to explore further to improve your learning? Why?

PARAGRAPH: Which mobile technologies worked best for your learning preferences, if any? Why? (Don't just say things like "I'm a visual learner, so it helped me to see it." That's not good enough.)

Our group enjoyed the Ipad and microblogging quests as learning tools. I would say that these two mobile technologies surprised us the most as learning tools. Daniel didn’t think that microblogging would help him out as much as it did to find a motorcycle. I figured that the iPad would be helpful in my education, but I didn’t know to that extent. There are a few mobile technologies that we hated as a group. We were unable to understand why they were even learning quests. Those were podcasts and vlogs. I think that these were not realistic to us because not everyone is able to have access to these things. Not everyone has a camera or an ipod. I think we just want to continue exploring our ipads and tablets. They are the future of technology so we want to use them as much as possible to further our learning. We want to learn all the apps we can use for classes.

Word count: 162

The mobile technologies that helped us the most were the Ipad and the microblogging. They helped our visual learning preferences greatly. These two quests displayed the information for us so that we could understand them better for class. The Ipad was very interactive so this helped our sequential learning preferences. These devices also helped us look at the way we perceive things. They allowed us to reflect on the learning materials and they played into our active and reflective learning preferences. I think that the hardest thing sometimes is learning about our learning preferences. During the metacognition quest, it was frustrating at times because I don’t think that you can just label people with learning preferences. Everyone is different. Sometimes we even surprise ourselves as learners and are able to learn with devices that don’t match our learning preferences. I would say that we are very adaptive learners.

Word count: 148

Summarize how you will use what you learned in this class after this semester (2 paragraphs, 100-150 words as a group)

PARAGRAPH: What mobile learning strategies will you continue using after this class? How can they be used when you are learning at a job (or outside of school)?

PARAGRAPH: Which mobile technologies will you continue using for learning after this class? Why? How can they be used when you are learning at a job (or outside of school)? Which mobile technologies will you continue using for non-learning purposes? What are they? Which mobile technologies will you avoid using after this class? Why?

I think that mobile learning strategies that we will continue using after this class are the microblogs as well as the Ipad. Like we said before, those are the only learning strategies that we really connected with. A lot of companies have begun to use the ipad and tablets in their businesses. Currently we both work at In n Out burger, so I think that we can’t really use any of the mobile learning strategies at work. Our work is more about labor than using devices such as the ipad or microblogging. I think that we both want to explore internships outside of school so both of these could help us learn about our internships. They also will help us figure out organize our materials and reflect on how we are doing in the internship.

Word count: 135

Everything that we have learned in this course about mobile learning has allowed us to continue using these tools. I think that it’s a great skill to be able to operate these devices. I will definitely use the ipad to continue taking notes. That is the greatest function for both of us. We love that you can highlight and write notes on pdfs. Particularly we enjoy apps like OneNote or Evernote. We can use them outside of school to help with our internships as we stated above. For non-learning purposes we can use many mobile strategies. We will use things like texting, and microblogging. Micoblogging is a way to express how we feel and it is like a personal online diary at times. That’s pretty awesome. We will use to the ipad to play games. I think we just want to avoid podcasts and vlogs because they have no use to us. I don’t really care to become a youtube guru or something like that.

Word count: 165