I am currently building a sister site to Jamael's Shorts called Jamael's Shortcuts :-) It is a technology toolbox, a hodgepodge of tools for tech integration. It is still in its infancy, but please check it out- there are some things up that you may find useful. Hope to see you there!
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A classmate from one of my other classes posted this video to our Class Resource Database. It is Sugata Mitra speaking about the results of an experiment he ran about Child-Driven Education (more or less, constructivism - but even less invasive). All he really did was set up computers with high-speed Internet in the slums of India to see what uneducated children could learn from exploration. It turns out, they taught themselves English and Biotechnology in a matter of months. It's just too good not to share.
Jamael It looks like Principal Holman didn't have time for me to present my Prezi on Constructivism to my colleagues. So, I have made an enhanced podcast of it for you to enjoy! I don't think my link survived the conversion, but it just took you to the same YouTube video that showed up in my Prezi in the previous post.
I can't wait to use Podcasts in my classroom. There are so many things you can do with them, you could even record an entire class on a podcast and have the students listen to it as homework when the school has a Snow Day or something so that you don't miss a day of class! The nice thing about that is, I'm sure the students would prefer to listen/watch a 30 minute (perhaps enhanced) podcast than sit in class and hear the same thing. Conversely, if the students made their own podcasts, we could have them submit podcasts as take home tests. All they need to do is email them to the teacher by a certain day and time and we grade them as oral exams. This would give the aural students a chance to show the teacher what they have learned in an interesting and fun way. By letting them talk and explain their understanding about a subject, they might surprise us, and they might even surprise themselves!
Jamael Ok, Garth Holman is the Principal, I am a teacher, and my classmates are also teachers, colleagues if you will. Assuming this scenario, I was asked by "the principal" to give a presentation on constructivism and how we (the teachers of our imaginary school) could incorporate examples of this theory in our classroom. As I said before, this is my first semester in any education classes, so I didn't know what any of this meant. I really hope that at some point, I learn what all these education theories are before... I'm teaching and still don't know what they are... But in my research, I learned that Constructivism is the learning theory developed from Piaget's experiential learning ideas. It is the idea that students develop their own knowledge and understanding through experience. The whole idea of constructivism is very avant-garde for Education; it's scary for adults to give children so much power. But you'd be surprised how much students actually learn when they have control over how they are educated. They have a lot more drive than we give them credit sometimes, the difference is they are genuinely interested and they choose their path to the finish line. I made a Prezi on constructivism and Webquests, a common constructivist tool. Webquests are like Internet Scavenger Hunts. The students are given a task and everything the students need to complete it is on the Internet provided the guidelines given by the teacher. All this is explained in my presentation below, including a YouTube within the presentation that does an even better job of explaining these things. I really like Prezis because they are so easy to make, they are a lot more visual than a Powerpoint, it is so easy to add pictures and video, and look! I can even embed my presentation on here! I didn't know I could do that until I was playing with the settings. It's extremely user-friendly and, did I mention it's free?! Just click the "Play" arrow and it will scroll through the presentation.
Jamael |