Constructivist learning with ICT
In her closing statement of the panel discussion, Diana Laurillard encouraged the audience to use ICT technologies as tools for constructivist and collaborative learning. These approaches are exemplified in many of the presentations at the conference. From a constructivist point of view the notion of authenticity is important, and for example Lijing Shi will talk later this afternoon about using authentic materials from the internet rather than text books when developing intercultural competence. Other examples of the impact of authenticity can be found in the many presentations about using blogs in the classroom; since students working with blogs know that they have an audience apart from their teacher reading their posts they might feel more motivated. The fact that they are creating a tangible final product might also have a motivating effect. In addition, blogging can support collaborative and/or individual reflection, which is also an important part of the constructivist paradigm. Do you have more examples of how ICT tools can be used to support constructivist learning?
posted by Therese at 2:59 pm
6 Comments:
I think that it is important in this context to talk about the pedagogical design as well. The affordance of the tools, the learners, the teacher and the content (and the context, of course) should be considered
within a collaborative framework. That way the collaborative approach to the activities can be matched with the potential of the various tools. One design approach in the area of CSCL, for instance, can be found in the writings of Pierre Dillenbourg, especially in the articles about scripting.
As I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog, copyright has to be a serious consideration when using authentic materials gleaned from the Web. A popular myth is that if it's on the Web anyone can use it and disseminate it. Not true!
Copyright legislation is becoming increasingly stringent in Europe. Unless you see a "terms of use" message indicating that the materials can be freely used for educational purposes, e.g. as in a Creative Commons licence, you have to assume that you need permission to use them, and this includes public websites, password-protected websites and an intranets. Read all about it here:
"General guidelines on copyright"
http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_copyright.htm
Copyright legislation is a major obstacle that we are up against. But it's a two-edged sword. Authors (and that includes myself) have far more rights in determining how people use their materials. A friend, for example, was able to stop a commercial company from using materials that they had gleaned from her (free) website and distributing them to language students that had paid the company for French tuition. Cheeky, eh?
Peppi, your point about not forgetting about the pedagogy is very important! Not only did I fall into this trap here, but I'm under the impression that focus during this conference mainly has been on tools, and not so much on what we do with them. Thanks also for the reading tip, I will have to check it out!
Where better to construct than in virtual worlds? text-based worlds may not be so popular now, but they offer a lot of flexibility to learners and teachers alike (as long as they´re not seen as an extension of the classroom or a chatroom) and graphical and audio-based worlds that permit collaborative development of ideas, artefacts etc. can also be extremely beneficial...
How long will constructivism last? I just had another look at Wilfried Decoo's paper (see reference below) in which he looks ahead to the death of current prevailing approaches - which will probably die sooner or later in the same way as most other approaches to language teaching have died. A method is usually in vogue for around 20-30 years, i.e. the typical career span of a teacher.
Worth a read:
Decoo W. (2001) On the mortality of language learning methods. Paper given as the James L. Barker lecture on 8 November 2001 at Brigham Young University: http://www.didascalia.be/mortality.htm
Constructivism is dead, long live constructivism? Yes, like Graham, I have been waiting and watching for some indication of a move away from explicitly identifying constructivism as the guiding pedagogical construct (no pun intended)...in some ways i sometimes find that people think that getting students to do anything can be regarded as constructivist as it necessarily involves them moving from their own knowledge/conceptions/etc...I wonder whether we actually need a better articulated theory/approach to pedagogy...
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