Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice

Cooperative learning in social learning in practice.  I do believe that in human nature we want to have social interaction to give meaning to everything.   I see that cooperative learning plays an important role in developing social skills and social learning.  Cooperative learning works to a point but it is not the end all learning strategy that a Charter school that I unfortunately worked at for a year believes it to be.  The school wanted every lesson of every day to be completed with cooperative learning, more accurately, using Kagan learning structures.  They believed that those structures made everything fun and then the students would learn.  This was unfortunate because the students at that school were performing at a very low level in every subject but believed they were great students because of the success of the "cooperative learning" that they had in class.  I believe that cooperative learning does reinforce learning and build up social skills.  Cooperative learning is integral in learning a foreign language by relying on your classmates to affirm pronunciation and understanding. It is a tool that is useful when used appropriately,  but is ineffective when over used.  This strategy is just like diet plans, what works from some will not work for all.  Like with everything in teaching every person needs to find what works for them and for their classes and be happy.