Contructivism, Constructionism, and Technology

My cohorts and I dive into yet another week full of information this week: Constructivism and Constructionism (What's the difference, you ask? More on that in a second, I'm trying for suspense here!) and quite a few technology tools that we can use to get our students actively creating things to help enrich their learning experiences.

Constructivism, humorously referred to in one of our videos as the "v-word", is a theory of learning. It says that everyone basically "constructs" their individual knowledge of things. The example we were given was that of a chair. We each have hundreds of associations in our minds that make up our idea of what "chair" actually means. We have each come up with, or construct, our individual reality of what a chair is, and it is a little different for each of us.

Constructionism, or as Dr. Orey refers to it, the "n-word", has far more to do with what we do in the classroom. It focuses on students being actively engaged in constructing things. This could be any sort of project, from a story board to a wiki, as long as they are a part of the learning. They look at the external reality, or the information they are learning, and try to balance it with their existing schemas, or what they currently believe and understand. Something has to give here: either they make reality fit with what they already know (assimilation), or they alter what they know to fit with reality(accommodation). What is important about constructionism is that students are "constructing", they are actively engaged in learning, and this way of learning fits with constructiVism in that they are creating their own individual knowledge. And it should be a deep understanding of the concept at the end of the process of creating an artifact.

We looked at several tools that we can use to integrate technology using constructionism. We could use spreadsheet software to have students look at relationships between variables, exploring the correlations. We could use data collection tools to have students collect information (our example was a digital pH probe). We could use software such as Power Point or Microsoft Publisher (or similar software) to have students create digital projects that are not simply a report of what we have taught them, but require that they discover new knowledge to create. And we looked at several web resources: web quests, sites that explain problem-based learning and how to create a project, and some simulation sites where students try their hand in a virtual creation setting, and discover what effect their manipulations have. All of these resources, provided they are used to have students actively engaged in creating their personal knowledge of the material, tie in with Constructionism.

A lot of the sites that we looked at turned out to be dead ends, of sorts. There was some explanation of how to create problem-based learning activities, but I was so hoping for lots of activities to be at our fingertips, without us re-creating the wheel, so-to-speak. The one thing I would like to see is more sites like http://astroventure.arc.nasa.gov/ that we reviewed. I tried this out, and it was not only engaging, I think I got stuck there for at least an hour, trying to manipulate variables to figure out what size planet needed to be what distance from which type star "sun" to support life! And I'm not a science teacher! I teach Spanish! But I can see the potential for true learning with children on this site, and if it can be done to explain red dwarf stars, red giant stars, blue stars, and yellow stars to me, and what mass/distance is needed for planets to support life, then surely sites like this can be developed to teach any number of concepts! Of course, this one was created by NASA. Maybe they could donate just a few of their scientists to create more sites like this one... :-)