Group Learning on Social Clouds

Definition of Social Cloud:

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

The Applications of Social Clouds:

• Social Computation Cloud
• Social Storage Cloud
• Social Collaborative Cloud
• Social Cloud for Public Services
• Enterprise Social Cloud

Above are my own answers to the questions. In group discussion, we found our answers to these questions were almost the same. However, two other articles related to social clouds were shared by my groupmates:

• Social Cloud: Cloud Computing in Social Networks
• Information Technology tools for a transition economy

Combining our views and what we found from the above aricles, we had more comments on social clouds: Social clouds can provide different kinds of services, however instead of using a centralized manner, the services provided by a social cloud are actually provided and maintained by a social network. The type of the services does not matter, it can be computational work, storage, collaborative... therefore there are lots of applications listed in the 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.

1. What was the epistemic aims in (1) Class Activity One (individual work) and (2) Class Activity Two (group work)? Is there any change in epistemic aim? If so, why did you change your aims?
   During individual work, I just quickly go through the article and try to find the answers to the questions. During group work, everyone should his/her opinions. It does not make any senses if everyone share the same idea, therefore we change our aim to find something different and new. In this case, we are not on the cognition level, combining and summarizing all options is meta-cognition and finding new things is epistemic cognition.
2. Is there any differences in terms of individual and group epistemic cognition, how?
   In individual work, one may easily be satisfied with a current answer or it is rather difficult to discover new ideas. However in group work, it is quite common that different people have different answers therefore we have greater chance to develop something new.
3. How did you approach to the problem individually and in group, respectively? Is there any differences in the processes involved?
   The approaches in individual work and group work are quite different. We can read and check references individually, however we can share different options and discuss in group and group work is never limited to discussion, we can even have a debate. In this case I think it is much more possible for us to find the answer which we never know before.