Constructivism in Practice

My understanding from this weeks resources...Teachers that understand not every child always needs to conduct an individual experiment, however, every child will benefit from manipulating the data to see how the outcome could change with varying data, are effectively using their instructional minutes. We are fortunate to be teaching in a time that has tools that will provide more opportunity for out students to ask "what if," create a hypothesis and get instant feedback to show the outcomes of "what if." Students are not weary to question because they are not turned away by the amount of work the results could take to find. I compare this same willingness to question, to the first time my math teacher handed me a graphing calculator. I was much more enthusiastic to problem solve and try different variables when I knew the tool would do the "work" for me. Testing out the varying variables and examining the results provides a more beneficial and increased level of understanding.

While not every student needs to have the same first hand experience with a concept, Dr. Orey stresses the importance of having every student building an artifact to build upon an understanding they already have. This is referred to as constructivism verses constructionism. Constructionism is used when lessons are interacting with the student to provide assimilations and accomodations to construct something. In order to understand new concepts, accommodations and new schema must be made available to students. Learning is individualized and focusing on what is going on in each students learning process. This correlates with the ideas presented in the text because students are able to quickly try out different variables and get instant feedback. They are able to take what they already know and build upon it or create knew schema as needed.

Cognitivism in Practice

"Students who lack sufficient background knowledge or are unable to activate this knowledge may struggle to access, participate, and progress throughout the general curriculum, where reading to learn is a prerequisite for success" (N. Strangman & T. Hall)

Knowing how important it is for students to have background knowledge and the disadvantage students are at without it, it is vital that teachers provide virtual field trips for their students. Our curriculum is designed to teach students about the world. And while it would be great to be able to travel the world with our students and provide them with real life experiences and memories for them to build off of, it is not a scenario that is offered to the majority of our students . Fortunately, we can bring many of the wonders of our world to our classroom. One teacher in our building has the students create fake passports for the Social Studies unit on Canada and Mexico. She stamps the students "passport" after each field trip. Many of her lessons include a "guest speaker." However, the guest speaker is thousands of miles away. Through the use of Skype, she has students talk with a native from the country they are studying. The students are no longer simply reading about this far away land, they are experiencing it through another persons eyes. Suddenly their lesson and objective for learning has relevance and personal meaning. The students can connect with the concept and are concerned...which aligns with the theory of cognitivism.

While virtual field trips are of great benefit to students, they are only one of many tools available. They can be strengthened when combined with a concept map. Concept maps allow students to visually show the knowledge they are learning and the path that has gotten them there. The concept map displays the connection or thought process that leads the thinker to the outcome reached. It is a tool showing relationships and recall. Having just started playing around with this tool, I am amazed at easily one concept naturally leads to another. I would love to see how insightful concept maps could be when used in a high school history class!




http://www.cast.org/system/galleries/download/ncac/ncac_BK.pdf

Behaviorism in Practice

We all know someone who attended a school with multi-age classrooms or grew up having forty-five students in their homeroom class; as a teacher who panics when the class size jumps from twenty-five to thirty, I can not even imagine. Knowing how beneficial instant feedback is, and the importance of differentiation, I have no idea how teachers have been able to feel successful at the end of the day before computers. Computers are a tool that allow students to interact with their instruction, while progressing forward to expand their knowledge and likewise stepping back to review a concept when mastery is not shown. Students are no longer expected to master a concept at the exact same rate as their perfect classmate Sally. Programs available on the computer allow students to have a more individualized education plan. No longer are only the students that meet the criteria to be placed on a state IEP getting the benefits of an individualized instruction plan. Computers are a tool that allow every student to be monitored and ensured a successful growth rate. Our school has a program new this year called Acuity. Acuity differentiates the test a student is taking based on the answers the student is getting right. The program then offers resources for the student to practice to ensure the student is understanding the intended benchmark. This program aligns with the behaviorist theory because the students response to a question is what determines what the next question given to the student should be.

This weeks reading of "Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works" offered me with insight that gave me many "ah ha" moments and reinforced my decision to be pursuing my masters in technology. I was so excited to learn about MS Word being able to summarize writing and the option to have MS Word evaluate the paper in regards to the readability scale level. Just as I envision and want my students to use these tools when they write a paper, I found myself going back and pulling up papers I had written to see how I had scored. Empowering students with this tool provides a quick check for the students to check their sentence variety. Being a second grade teacher I am not ready to introduce my students to the feedback option from their peers, however, I can see how impacting that tool could be.

Survey Monkey was used in my classroom this week. I loved the idea of giving my students real data...not data from a worksheet. My students completed a survey about how much effort they put into preparing for their weekly spelling tests and compared that data to the data collected on the average grade they were receiving on their spelling test. It made for great discussion. I am excited to see the results of this weeks spelling test as I told my students we would be taking the same survey again to compare results...again looking at effort compared to the grade. I am confident we will notice an improvement in both.

I by no means think a computer is the end all solution for educating our students, but I do believe when utilized properly it can be a great benefit to a learning environment.