As many of us know, the ideas of constructivism focus around students essentially creating their own learning experience while the teacher serves as a facilitator of information and ideas instead of the only source. In addition, constructionism additionally suggests that students learn best when an actual product is created during the learning process and the student actually creates something with the information that they are learning. Both of these concepts are regularly seen within the classroom on a regular basis in most schools across the country. However, I believe that with the increased integration of technology into schools, we will see even more project based learning and constructionism in the classroom that focuses around students creating an actual artifact to demonstrate they have obtained the necessary content material.
The book I have been using recently, "Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works" (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malensoki, 2007), dives further into this subject and suggests numerous technological tools and strategies that can incorporate this particular learning theory and apply it to the actual classroom. The ones that drew particular interest from me were the web resources that were discussed, particularly one titled, "Muzzy Lane's Making History: The Calm and the Storm, which can be found at www.making-history.com. As a social studies teacher, I was immediately interested by this particular learning tool because it focused on social studies content. In addition, after reading about the tool, I began to think that this could have some real impact in my classroom when I teach about World War II.
To briefly summarize the web resources, students are placed in the position of a leader of a particular country near the onset of World War II. They then begin making various decisions that particular leader would have had to make and then see if their decisions changed the outcome of that particular moment in history; thus constructing their own learning. I say this because they have the ability to see what types of decisions could have been made (instead of the ones that were) and see how these different decisions could have changed the outcome of this time period in history.
In addition to this tool, the other web resources that were discussed had much of the same relationship with constructivism in that they allowed students to take control of a situation and then see what kind of outcome their decisions produced. These ranged from web resources involving weather to modifying a catapult to ensure a direct hit on a building. Not only do these constructivist strategies allow students to see how the information they are learning can actually be applied, they also serve as a fun way to learn and an approach that will likely be enjoyed by the students which is always a good thing.
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Marcus,
ReplyDeleteI like to see the students create their own learning structure also. I try to give assignments where I give them as little information as I can. Basically, it is what the standards require. Then they are left to learn and present their understanding of the material. I usually use this as a culminating actvivity. As little constructivists, they occillate between several apporaches to the end product. It is interesting to watch the ones who sit and think it out and compare to those who take off with an idea then return to the drawing board for further examination or a new start.
Marcus,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that students are engaged more in their learning and retain the information in long-term memory if teachers use these strategies. I believe if you used these websites with your students they would really enjoy being able to interact with the site and be able to retain more information.
Do you have computers in your classroom or do you have to go to a computer lab?
Students are often way more creative than teachers. Therefore, when given the opportunity to showcase their creativity through creating an artifact, the results often exceed our expectations. Students earn a sense of pride when they create something that they can display for others. They tend to work harder when they know their peers, other teachers, the community, etc., will be viewing their work. Student engagement increases and they often do not even realize how much work they are doing and how much information they are really learning because the learning has become fun and interesting. I hope you are able to try out the web resources you referred to in your post. It sounds like you already have the plans coming together in your mind. What a neat approach to take students back in time and really immerse them in a time period that might otherwise be too distant for them to really understand. You are making history come alive for your students!
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