Constructivist Learning

1. How could software applications and/or other technologies help you provide develop a constructivist learning environment for your students? Describe the lesson/learning environment you would be interested in creating and describe what technologies you might use. In your discussion, try to organize the tools using either Jonassen’s model (CLEs) or the Hannafin et al. model above (OLEs) opportunities for your students to access their prior knowledge and better organize new information?

I think that software applications that are available on the web today (commonly know as Web 2.0 tools) can be used to support a constructivist learning environment. In the classroom a teacher would try to create an environment where the student becomes an active participant in the learning process. The teacher would be a facilitator of the learning experience. The teacher would assign a project for the students that would start out as a question or a problem for the students to solve. The students would be working collaboratively in groups which supports what Jonassen’s said that “Learning most naturally occurs not in isolation but by teams of people working together to solve problems”. The students would interact with one another through blogs and wikis. In the blogs the students could post the information they have found and the other members of the group would add to it. By collaborating like this the students will build on each others contribution to the project. During this process the teacher would be making suggestions to the students and coaching the students. This could be done through chats or comments added to the blogs by the teacher. This would be the collaborative process. The students could also use blogs as personal journals to reflect what they are learning from this experience. The group could then create deliverables of their choice to best present their findings. They could work together through products like Google Doc or as in my school, cooperative file sharing that is setup in our network. The students would create deliverables and then share them using products, ie. Slideshare, where presentations like PowerPoint t can be put on the web for all to see. By publishing their findings the students will take pride and ownership of what they have learned. The students could then critique the findings of each group also through the blogs. Rubrics would have been created for both the students in the group to evaluate themselves and for the teacher to see if the students have met the expectations of the project. While working on the project there are many ways for the students to organize their information with Web 2.0 tools such as backpack, bubbleshare, and del.ic.ous. While the students are gathering information from the web they can use RSS for immediate updates to their blog from other websites.