Zack March completed a learning preferences survey at the beginning and end of his ITEC 299 class. His scores were in the middle and did not change much. He prefers reflective learning and studying verbally over group work or illustrations. Through the class, he learned the importance of improving weaker preferences and choosing effective learning pathways. Zack chose the "Learning Warrior" pathway to seek knowledge for personal growth. He explored social networking tools for learning and found OpenStudy most useful for collaborative study sessions.

1. Synthesis Quest Project #2
Zack March

2. Learning Preferences
• My scores for the learning preferences survey at the beginning of the
course were very in between and not too far in certain directions. I scored
a 7 for reflective, 5 for verbal and 3 for sensing and sequential. By the end
of the class my style of preferences hadn’t really changed and they still
had little separation. I still preferred to be reflective and do work
delligently on my own (as I am doing this quest) rather than working in
groups. And I continued to study verbally seeking out facts in words and
listening to screencasts before tests rather than paying attention to
illustration. I learned by the end of class that choosing the correct
pathways towards learning and learning to improve on your weaker
preferences is very important for understanding new topics. I’ve pretty
much known this before taking this class but ITEC 299 helped me utilize
these characteristics while studying. I guess it does help to know your
preferences as far as having them explained to you to better understand
yourself. But really I’ve known this about myself since I’ve been actively
studying pretty much since high school so it’s kind of like someone telling
you what you already know, nothing really changed.
Zack March

3. Learning Pathway
• In my case as far as a pathway for learning for this class I chose I
wanted to be a Learning Warrior. I wanted to seek deeper into
technologies for personal growth and better knowledge. I believed I
fulfilled this pathway by obtaining new knowledge that not only
helped me in this class, and other classes but also my job (social
media public relations). I may have dipped into the Learning Sage
pathway a bit because I did learn about a lot of new devices and
web tools I didn’t know existed. Devices that could help me learn by
reviewing and sharing content with others such as
delicous, MMOG’s, Grockit, VoxSwap etc. There are many tools out
there that I didn’t fully understand until this class. But all in
all, since I mainly used the social material I learned in this class to
better myself so I believe I stayed a warrior.
Zack March

4. Activities for Learning Pathway
• Activities for using social media to learn, such as lessons on learning
a new language, joining study groups, and playing interactive games
that will help you perform surgery really helped expand my
knowledge social networks. The learning activities where you can
be tutored on a subject or join live interactive study sessions such
as Grockit and OpenStudy and showed me the internet in a whole
new light. I used to use social networks to chat with friends or share
photos and now I know they can be a fast and easy guide to
learning a new material. To get a deeper understanding after
exploring these different tools it was time to try them out. Signing
up and for any social network is fast and easy. The activity that I
believe worked best for learning with others was the OpenStudy
network. I found this the easiest to manage and navigate through
because you can start by asking questions by topic and answers are
given back in real time. I can use this as a collaborative learning tool
for group work and study sessions.
Zack March

5. Social Top 3
• Bookmarking:
One social technology quest that helped me in my learning was the social bookmarking quest. Social bookmarking showed
me that you could learn a lot from other peoples’ contributions. A website where you can find the contributions is
Delicious.com, which is the website that I explored to contribute to my learning. You can enter any word or phrase in the
simple search bar they provide on their website and instantly find interesting things that relate to what you’re
learning. Learning preferences that this quest accommodated for were my sensing and visual learning preferences because I
was able to use the facts that I already knew and apply them to the links provided by other people. There were also many
images followed by information that helped me learn more about the art world. The simple visual aids on certain links that
were provided also kept me entertained while learning about subjects like business or accounting.
Facebook:
I also use Facebook often. I like to use my Iphone to keep me updated on my facebook page as well. I enjoy seeing the
news feed and try to update my news feed as much as possible. For instance, as we approach finals week, I updated on my
facebook about how many essays were due for me by the end of the semester. I had several friends post on my facebook to
offer help and advice on what I can do to get a better grade and time manage myself. Through this technology, I was able to
stimulate my learning experience because I was more active and more motivated to get my work done on time. I was also
able to stay updated on friends in class that were going through the same problems and could talk to them about what we
were trying to accomplish.
OpenStudy:
Lastly, and quite unexpectedly, social networking was a social technology that was actually very useful in learning. Before
this, my perception of social technology was that it is very time consuming and achieves very little in the long run. Social
bookmarking helped me discover a lot of articles showing how useful social networks can be, and how important
networking in general is as far as finding a good job and meeting people who can benefit you in some aspect of your life.
Social networking appealed to my active and global learning preferences. Social networking is very hands-on and has a very
active-learning component to it by nature, so that helped me learn. Also, seeing all the different options for social
networking helped give me a more global understanding ofMarchsocial networking is all about.
Zack what

6. Synthesized Experience
• The technology quest that most interested me was the one on
social bookmarking. I have gotten pretty familiar with hashtags and
tools to help you search relevant information about related topics
on Twitter and Instagrm, but I had no idea that sights such as
Delicuos even existed. I found these very helpful to find what I was
looking for just by searching hashtags and looking through peoples
stacks. It was a great way for me to interact and share news that I
had come across with other people.
I would say this technology worked best for me because being I
was able to look up relevant information quickly. Being able to read
others articles related to mine was effective because being a
sensing learner I was able to make connection easily and find the
true meaning of things. Checking different news sources and
monitoring other peoples suggestions helped me gain more
knowledge about many topics.
Zack March

7. What Now!?
• After this class, I definitely continue to use my active and visual learning. Many of
the learning strategies can be used on the job and outside of school. The learning
strategy that I used the most was interacting with groups of people, so it will be
easy to use social networks sites such as Facebook or bookmarking to share
information as well as receive information. At a job, one can use Social Networking
sites; maybe a more appropriate one would be LinkedIn, or Google+ to create a
group of coworkers to share information. With that, one can move onto sharing
social book marking to pass information through.
• I will continue using social networking technologies after this class. Social
networking really does help; it helps with keeping in contact with people, learning
through shared information, as well as communicating with other people in a
thread or post. One can use social networking to share information and posting
threads or posts. Obviously for non-learning purposes, games and massive
multiplayer online games would be used. I would just be able to play many online
multiplayer games, and maybe learn a couple of things in the game. If I were to
avoid any social technologies, I would probably avoid social book marking; only
because I do not get them that much, and I still need to figure out how to use
them efficiently.
Zack March