Constructivism and Constructionism Relating to Technology

When I began to brainstorm instructional strategies that relate to generating and testing hypotheses that relate to constructivism I really got off to a slow start. As I began to recall Dr. Michael Orey’s video segment Constructionist and Constructivist Learning Theories I remembered the PowerPoint and Microsoft Publisher ideas. Then I began to brainstorm some ideas of my own with a little help from my Walden colleagues on the discussion board. Then, it seemed, that the flood gates opened and I ended up having a hard time deciding what idea to focus on for the basis of this blog. Instead of focusing on only one idea, I decided to go over several options and perhaps I can give back a few ideas to my colleagues.


The Essential Question


The main component to a constructed artifact is the essential question. This question is important because it gives the assignment direction and drives the research. It gives the assignment focus because it “allows students to spend more time interpreting the data rather than gathering the data," (Marzano, 2007). The essential question is important because the World Wide Web is so vast, I believe that many students feel overwhelmed when doing research. Think of the essential question as your topic sentence of an essay. It sets the tone, and gives the reader the main idea of what the writer is trying to say.

Guide Your Students

Guide your students so they can navigate the sometimes overwhelming World Wide Web. Offer web sites where students can find valuable and accurate information. I think that in many cases students find the amount of information on the web so massive they have a hard time getting through all of it and finding exactly what they need. If the instructor gives a few web sites that can lead the students in the right direction it will save a lot of time and frustration for the student.
I also believe that many students get frustrated with the technology one uses to convey their findings. Many times Power Point or Excel is too complicated for a student to be able to use. Giving tutorials and simple easy-to-follow directions can help with this to some degree; however, this is a big obstacle when dealing with technology.


The Founding Fathers

Constuctionism pioneer Jean Piaget laid the foundations for ideas on how children learn. Seymour Papert later developed mathematical programs to help students visualize and create designs based on complex mathematics expanding the research the Piaget started. (Click on the photos to read about Piaget and Papert)

Constructionism in the 21st Century Classroom

When you combine these founding fathers of constructionism with the use of technology as we know it today, the possibilities are exciting.

Here are a few ways students can construct an artifact.

• A social studies class could benefit by dividing up a class into three groups and assigning each group a branch of the American government and have students detail each section on a Web page, wiki, PowerPoint, or Google.docs. Later in the year you could divide these into groups again for the Mayans, Incas, and Aztecs.
• A language arts teacher could have a collaborative creative writing process in google.docs where students collaborate on a fictitious story all online. They could also create an on-line biography where each student in a group takes a part of a famous person's life and posts it in a separate section or Web page.
• Students could also create a Web page, blog, wiki, or PowerPoint to present their findings from a virtual field trip. They could explore the Australian Reef and describe the animal and plant life that sustains life on the reef.
• Lynda Donovan’s idea on using publisher to make books about novels and poems with photos from the internet is also a wonderful idea.

Final Thoughts

All these ideas give students ownership in an artifact that they construct. It is believed that when students build they get a deeper more in-depth understanding of the material. The use of technology gets the students involved with computers which most kids are already interested in. These are just a few ideas from a quick brainstorm, I am sure after talking with colleagues it would be easy to develop other ideas for other subjects. Let me know what you think about some of these ideas. How could they be better? What are some obstacles I may have not considered? What are some other subjects that these can be used for?
Thanks for looking at my blog! I hope you enjoy it!

Resources

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008). Program seven. Constructivist and constructionist theories. [Motion picture]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore: Author.

Marzano, Robert. Using Technology with classroom instruction that works. denver: Mid-continent for learning and reasearch, 2007.

Cognitivism in the Classroom - Make it Stick

I remember my note-taking days in high school and my early days in college. I would write feverishly to get all the valuable information then come test time I would look through my notes and nothing would look familiar and I was unable to recall any of the lessons from my professors. As I have grown both as a student and as a teacher and gained knowledge of the cognitive process I realize that there is no one way to take notes, but that each individual should develop a way to take notes that will be the most effective for the individual. All this sounds great, right? Well, not really. Now comes the hard part. Teachers and their students need to determine the best way to take notes for each individual. Determining this can take a long time and unfortunately often it is only through trial and error that one can determine his or her best way to take notes. Once you find the best way for your students they can have a better chance at retaining important information.

I remember reading the Outsiders. As a struggling reader by the time I was done with the first chapter I had already lost track of all the characters. With the frustration of not knowing how each character related to one another it was not long before I just gave up reading. Now a simple diagram of the characters can help with the mental organization. The character Trait Note-Taking Template Created in Inspiration mentioned in chapter six of Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works by Roberts Marzano. This is a great way for students to create summaries and notes for material that otherwise would be too complex for your visual thinkers to grasp. This is just one example of how to use it. I could imagine this would also be great for biology to diagram cells or mathematics to show the process of the acronyms Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally and F. O. I. L.

Here is a Screen Shot of an InSpiration web
with the charactrers of The Outsiders
(Click to Enlarge)

Inspiration is also a wonderful tool because it takes the diagram and turns it into an outline. Outlines are important in your writing courses to help students arrange their essays so their paragraphs stay on topic. With the click of a mouse you can arrange a brainstorm into an outline making the two most challenging components of the essay easier than ever. Again, writing courses are not the only application for this program. Use it for history to arrange a time line with important dates or to show the growth stages for a frog embryo before you virtually dissect it.

Here is an outline version of the above web.
This was created with one mouse click!
Simple?! I know!
(Click to Enlarge)

I hope you have an opportunity to explore this wonderful program and see its many uses in the classroom. I am also interested to see how you are using Inspiration and your success stories about how you were able to reach that student for the first time! Feel free to mention some of your less than successful stories as well. Remember “one learns little from success, and much from failure.” (Man I need to stop eating at Chinese places.)

Multiple Intelligences vs. Behaviorist Theory

I believe that the traditional behaviorist theory has taken a lot of negative press lately especially with the increase research and knowledge we have regarding multiple intelligences. I do believe, however, that the traditional behaviorist theory still has a place in our classrooms. I think that if we abandon this traditional teaching method we will abandon those students who learn this way. I think that with a combination of this traditional behaviorist method of teaching combined with other teaching strategies that appeal to other learning styles will be the best way to reach the most possible students.

One particular are that I think the behaviorist theory is useful for is something like multiplication facts. This is best accomplished by root memorization and repetition. This is supported by the theories of Thorndike and Skinner who believed that through stimulus response and operant conditioning you can teach the mind to recall this information quickly, (Behaviorist Orientation, 2009). This method essentially is the classical conditioning discovered by Pavlov and his dog. This is also common in athletes who are training for a specific sport or event. They repeat these movements to get a desired result which is to swim faster, bike faster, and to run faster.

B. F. Skinner - Click on Photo to read a summary of his research.

I think that many students would be left behind if we abandoned this method of
teaching. These are your learn by doing and your learn by listening kids. I also
think this appeals to your kids who have good memorization skills too. There
are, however, many instances that this traditional behaviorist theory is not
effective. Teaching history dates with this method can leave many students in
the dark. Your visual learners will not take anything from a boring lecture tell
all the dates or even a tiny, postage-stamp sized photo in an out-of-date
textbook. Instead show a larger than life photo on your LCD projector, or a
short film which can bring to life a historical event.

Multiple Intelligences Model
Click on the Model for summaries of each of the intelligences.

We all have those students that will understand all the material no matter what. These are the kids who are finished with the assignment before you are even done reading the directions. They are the ones whose papers you use as an answer key when you leave yours at home. These kids will be successful students no matter what. The students these different earning styles will appeal to and the ones I like to refer to as the “tweeners.” These are the students who need just a little push to move them to the next level.

I really believe that most teachers are reluctant to learn more about the different learning styles because they think they need to throw out everything they have been doing in the past. This is not he case, however. What we, as teachers, should be thinking is continue what we do wall, and make a few changes to appeal to more learning styles. I think we can reach more of those tweeners with a few small changes rather than a total overhaul of our lessons.

What are your experiences? What do you think? I would love to hear about your experiences both successes and failures.

References

Smith, M. K. (1999) 'The behaviourist orientation to learning', the encyclopedia of informal education, www.infed.org/biblio/learning-behavourist.htm, Last update: May 11, 2009.