Individual Work VS Group Work For Knowledge Formation

In order to understand epistemology deeper, we anticipate two activities in the class. Read an article and answer two questions. One is done by individual and the other is done by group with Google Docs.

The answers to both questions in two activities are following:

Activity One:

1.    What is the definition of Social Cloud?

A Social Cloud is a resource and service sharing framework utilizing relationships established between members of a social network.

2.    What are the possible applications of a Social Cloud?

Ø  A Social Computation Cloud

Ø  A Social Storage Cloud

Ø  A Social Collaborative Cloud

Ø  A Social Cloud for Public Science

Ø  An Enterprise Social Cloud

Activity Two:

1.   What is the definition of Social Cloud?

A Social Cloud is a resource and service sharing framework utilizing relationships established between members of a social network.

More comment: Social Cloud can provide some kinds of services and these services are actually provided and maintained by a social network instead of centralized servers. The type of the services does not matter, it can be computational work, storage, collaborative… therefore there are lots of applications listed in this article. As long as the services are provided by a social network and it utilizes the relationships established in a social network, it is considered as a Social Cloud.

2.   What are the possible applications of a Social Cloud?

Ø  A Social Computation Cloud

Ø  A Social Storage Cloud

Ø  A Social Collaborative Cloud

Ø  A Social Cloud for Public Science

Ø  An Enterprise Social Cloud

More reading:
Social Cloud: Cloud Computing in Social Networks

http://www.im.uni-karlsruhe.de/Upload/Publications/aface0bb-d437-49dc-bf6d-a943034c9870.pdf

http://www.socialcloud.net/papers/ITtools.pdf

Both activities are process of knowledge formation.

Epistemic aims are goals related to finding things out, understanding them and forming beliefs. But, in different conditions, such as individual work and group work, is there any change in epistemic aim? As for me, there is a little change. In the individual work, my aim is to acquire true definition of social cloud and understand it and its application. On the another hand, in the group work, I expect to know more different opinions about the understanding of the social cloud, maybe we can have a discussion and introduce more sources to know it. You know, more people mean more ideas. As Prof. Chan said, Idea diversity is essential to the development of knowledge advancement, just as biodiversity is essential to the success of an ecosystem. Therefore, I think in group work, it may propose new and different ideas, which is beneficial to knowledge formation.

In the individual work, the process of knowledge formation is based on one’s own understanding and thought of the resource. For example, in the activity one, I understand the social cloud from reading the article and searching other relative documents. The knowledge formation is based on my own mode of thinking and experience. Maybe, I am not sure to clearly understand the social cloud for public science, one of the possible applications of a social cloud, because of the limitation of my knowledge.

In fact, group work is a kind of socialize learning, which is to build knowledge together in a social environment. It is a collective process when a group of people contribute and acquire knowledge and build new theory together. In the discussion, we can interact continuously to improve the quality, coherence and utility of idea. From the answers above, in group work, during the discussion and argumentation, we share each other understanding and confusion, make more and new comments and import more resource to understand the social cloud knowledge deeper.

To sum up, everyone needs individual work and group work to form knowledge. Undoubtedly, self-learning ability is important, but how to make the best use of group study is also very important, especially in rapid development information age, such as many forums for us to know or discuss knowledge.