Constructivism in Practice

The principle behind constructivism is that students actively construct their own knowledge . Teachers act as facillitators by providing students with the necessary resources and guidance. One of this week's readings focused on different tasks that can be used in the classroom which would have students generating and testing hypotheses. This fits well into the constructionist/constructivist model and is well supported by the use of technology. Students can use internet resources to gather factual knowledge and data on which they will base their hypotheses. Data can be organized and displayed in spreadsheets. Finally, with the help of interactive applets and simulations, students can test the hypotheses they make and draw conclusions based on the results. Students can then use whatever means of displaying their results that suits them, perhaps in a blog or power point format with charts and graphs or even in a video, showing and explaining the processes that were carried out. The end result would be students actively engaged in analyizing, using and conveying knowledge in a way that makes sense to them.