In week one of Teaching with Technology I learned about constructivism. This is what is considered to be a learning and personal experience. Learners bring their prior knowledge, experience and beliefs to a learning situation. Our learning experiences are the basic foundation that we bring to the situation. It enhances and enforces how and what we learn. Constructivism shows how learning is internally controlled. It also discusses that our knowledge is constructed through tools, resources, experiences and contexts.
When we think about using technology in the classroom and how a learner brings their internal experiences then I think this is a great tool for students and why as we go through the century why students are learning earlier and earlier. If you put a cell phone in a 8 year olds hand for any length of time, they begin to gain knowledge and experience of using technology. Now send them to school and the teacher has an iPad for them to use, then this new tool already fits in with the learners existing understanding and they can process and move forward without much help. This is discussed in Learning as a Personal Event A Brief Introduction to Constructivism. Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, (1999).
In the book, How People Learn, Brain, Mind, Experience and School, Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (2000), it provides information about bringing real-world problems into the classroom by connecting student with working scientists. In these partnerships, students collect data used to understand global issues. Some companies support student researchers and use the internet to interact. The technology advances we have in our classrooms today is making a huge impact on what we are able to do with not only society but also the knowledge our learners are able to gain from these experiences.
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