[Grassroots-l] [IAEP] Concise explanation of Constructionism from the Learning Team

[Martin Langhoff]

On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 6:15 AM, Seth Woodworth <seth at laptop.org> wrote:
> Inspired by Sameer's recent conversations with a pair of Montessori
> Kindergarden teachers.  I went to talk to Cynthia Solomon of the OLPC
> Learning team.  We got to talking about the theory of Activities and a few
> other topics.  Eventually she showed me this snippit from the Media Lab's
> Future of Learning Group:

This discussion seems mainly about bikeshedding, but my XS build is...
well building while I watch... so I may as well throw this in which
comes from a project actively and successfully used by teachers in
real life classrooms and remotely taught courses

    http://docs.moodle.org/en/Philosophy

Constructionism is not the only tool, and anyone advocating any single
tool as the only tool is... well, lost.

Frankly I'm not keen on theorising too much about this. I would go as
far as suggesting "be a volunteer teacher in the weekends" as a cure
(I coach kids sailing in the summer).

*We have to provide a set of quality tools that can be used by
teachers with various backgrounds, teaching strategies and styles.*
That's the mission, the rest is posturing. You'll observe that while
moodle's architect is a firm believer in constructionism, moodle is
incredibly flexible and can do a ton of things that are not in line
with constructionism.

So I'm more interested in our own theory of "how do we make this
useful for teaching?" -- yes, there will be things that we're more
eager to do. Things that will be easier to do - networked computers do
lend themselves more to constructivist approaches.

We're here to help -- not to dictate.




m
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