Constructivism: Exactly what we want our students to be.

Cooperative learning, Inquiry, Project based, these are all terms that have come up in my career as an Education student. Little did I know that they are key ways to use a constructivists approach to teaching. In order to explore constructivism we individually and cooperatively took part in two web quests. One focused on the different facets of constructivist learning and the other looked at the 5 E's of Inquiry. The main idea behind taking part in the Web Quests was that we want our students to look into the topics we are studying with curiosity and drive. We want them to foster discussion amongst our selves. Even though direct instruction is needed, it is always a great feeling when our students can discuss with each other and come up with meaningful questions for us teachers. The web quest is a good tool to use because its technology based and the teacher can pose the questions and its up to the students to use their critical thinking skills to make it through the  quest and arrive at an answer. In order to show what we learned this past week, our group made an animated video about constructivism connectivism, which is what we read about in our weekly reading. We used the site xtranormal to make the video. There were plenty of different scenarios and characters to use within the free trial that I signed up for. This was my week to run the meeting. I had a few technological mishaps at first but my group was really able to help me. We really are getting better and better at using the tech equipment. Using this video program was interesting, I have always wanted to use a video creation program but didn't even really know where to start. The tutorial was easy to follow and made it easier to input the dialogue. Our video with some really intelligent bears is here!

We looked into connectivism for our readings this week. They focused in on if and when does social media have a place in the classroom. For me, even after doing the readings and seeing the possible outcomes from using social media in my lessons I am still wary. My attention went directly to the the article entitled "Social Media tools can boost productivity."  The article presents information about how a Doctor is using a Facebook like site to help his small business. He said the connected-ness of the site makes it easy to communicate. As much as I think maybe a social media tool might help us as college students I do not think I would be comfortable using it with my own students. The chance of distraction or using the site for other reasons is too great. I was happy to see that Dropbox was on the list for the Web 2.0 tools. I only recently started using it to communicate with my employer in Austria to send documents but it is very user friendly and its easier to use then a zip drive!