Constructivism

For the constructivism project, my group chose to do a 2008 election project. It would cover different subjects and use all sorts of different technology. Students would learn the election process along with running a campaign. At the end of the project they would participate in an online election with students across the United States.

Students would be involved in creating campaign slogans, candidate commercials, posters, and flyers for their candidate. They would have to create a powerpoint presentation for the candidate they would vote for in the up coming election. During the project the students will be shown how to create a blog on www.blogger.com . They will have to keep a weekly journal on the blog about the 2008 election. The teacher will also create a class wiki were the students can add useful websites that they find.

Finally the students will have a debate about their candidate. They will be split up into four groups and given one of the following candidates: McCain, Obama, Biden, or Palin. They must research and study the issues to be able to defend themselves during the debate. They also will watch old debates along with taped recent debates.

This is a great project because it puts students into a real world situation. They get to see other students point of views and make decisions for themselves on who to vote for. They will learn that it is very important to be informed about the candidates and the issues before they vote.

Constructivism

A part of contructivism is accomodation and assimilation. I feel that assimilation is important because students can assimilate real life situations which gets them to use higher order thinking. In my classroom when I was teaching U.S. History, I would give students a part in history. For instance, The dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima. I would split the class into four groups (two for dropping the atom bomb and two against it.) The students would then have to gather all the history facts to persuade people to go with their idea. The class would then have a debate. By making the students debate, they had to come up with things on their own causing them to use higher order thinking. I would facilitate it so the students would stay on task and keep them in the right direction and of course correct their history if anything came up wrong. My students loved this and I think they got a lot out of it.

Technology

Its been a rough morning. When technology is working its a wonderful thing, but when something goes wrong it can be terrible. I have 26 computers in my media center. First period the junior honors english class came to the library to type essays. For some odd reasons the printers were not working. I had 26 panicking students looking at me because it was due at the end of the period. I ran around the media center like a mad man checking all the wires. It was the last wire I checked, It figures.

We have also had a lot of trouble with the computers, which we have every year starting out the new school year getting the little kinks out of the system.

I am looking foward to starting the new project on Constructivism Learning. I like this style of learning because it gives learners real life situations and they learn from their experiences and other peoples experiences.