Before our first Digital Learning class I had never heard of the word constructionism. I had no clue as to what it was. With a class discussion and some research I realize that I had been using it in most of my lesson plans that I constructed throughout the semester last year. Essentially, it is taking what a child already knows and building upon that to learn new things. There is even a section in our lesson plans called “Minds On” which is supposed to activate prior knowledge with students.
If students have a base in order to make connections there is a better chance they will understand a concept rather than trying to each something brand new that the student have never learned. That is why we start with basic concepts rather than something more difficult to understand. In math, we do not start in Kindergarten with division. We start with the counting, something that they have probably done before and build from there.
On the other side of the spectrum I have heard Bloom’s Taxonomy almost every day at the Faculty of Education. That is the other concept we learned this class. It is the spectrum of thinking skills a student uses. They go from lower order thinking skills (usually easier) like remembering to higher order thinking skills (usually harder for students) creating. In my experience the higher order thinking skills are a lot harder to try and use with students.
Now we have technology to make the higher order thinking skills easier to teach. Writing this blog right now I am using the highest order thinking skill, creating. This would be a great activity for older students. It gives students an outlet to write about whatever is on their mind. Some of the topics could be free writing and some could be reflective of school work. After some research I didn’t realize how technology useful technology can be when trying to tap into those higher order thinking skills. I discovered a program called Animoto that can be used to create short 30 second videos. Things could be a great tool for students to create presentations with. Using technology to access the higher makes things interesting for students and keeps them engaged.
Here is a link to the course site. It is a fantastic site for everything to do with education and technology. Click here for a link.