Connectivism and Social learning

My school has been trying to have teachers encorporate social learning into the classroom. We are encouraged to have the students work together in the classroom. Connectivism and social learning uses the social network students have to furter their learning. Socail learning believes that " meaningful learning occurs when students are engaged in social attivities."(Orey,2001)
Social leaning can be very effective. I have seen where a student can help another student understand a difficult concept or come up with an example that would be more relevant to the other student than anything I could come up with. A problem that I have found with the social learning theory is that it requires a lot of work in prepartion and planning. If social learning is used without the proper plannning it can lead to the students being off task and possible behavior problems. There are many ways to use technology with social learning. Blogs, wikis and voice threads are great ways of having the students work together using technology. I like to post homework on a blog and have students comment about it and ask questions. This allows the students to use the technology they are familiar with to learn. I use this stratagy in my class but I also fear it.