If you Build it, the Knowledge will Come

Greetings all!

As I continue along with my current Walden course, we are moving right through some well known learning theories. Up this week; constructionism! Or as many often refer to as constructivism. For those who are not familiar with this theory, its basis rests strong upon the belief that people learn best when they are able to construct information on their own by building some type of model or artifact that they are able to show to others.

Much like the cognitive learning theory that I discussed in my previous post, the constructionist learning theory is also one that I have a great belief in. When students are able to ask questions, explore topics, and then construct any given type of artifact about the topic, students develop a much richer understanding of what it is they were studying. Not to mention the amount of interest students develop when they are able to dive into a project and have the freedom to make it their own. Once again, I find this theory supporting to the cognitive theory in that by students being able to participate in strong project-based learning, the connections they are making with real world situations are huge! Learning no longer is just about reading a text book and then taking a test. We need connections! Those of you are involved in education in any sort of way or look back on your own schooling career probably agree that the classes where you sat in a desk and listened hour upon hour were dull, boring, and you probably did not take much information home with you.

We have the opportunity now days to really get our students involved in real life problems and solutions through the use of technology. So why not take advantage of it? As many of you might already know, I am a big fan of Edutopia. In our classroom resources this week I was excited to see a link to the site where project-based learning was in the spotlight. If you have not already checked it out, I urge you to do so! The link is http://www.edutopia.org/project-learning. This type of instructional strategies put students in the driver’s seat and actually has them doing the real work that they were learning about in the classroom. Students can see first hand how their learning applies to the real world and are not left wondering the infamous question “when am I ever going to use this?” Now, if you are like me and teach lower elementary, you might think that while this is great stuff to apply at the High School level, it just is not the type of thing we can do at our grade level. True, yes, to some extent. Obviously we cannot be sending our 1st graders to do architectural work at a local office. However, there are so many different instructional strategies that we can certainly be using with our young elementary students as PowerPoints for one, are a great way to allow to students to create work that is unique and content rich. Students are able to put voice recordings, videos, images, quotes, and their own words into this type of project and they can do it in a way that represents their understanding and how they see it. Even something as simple as taking your young students on a nature walk and letting them observe what is around them and then having them make predictions about why certain things are they way they are. We just have to remember the learning does not stop with making the predications. We actually have to give our students the opportunity to some how test their predictions by using problem-solving strategies and then creating things to show the findings. Then the true learning begins!

Magan