Teaching with Technology - Week 1 Reflection

"Technical literacy should not be taught as an isolated subject, nor should activities with technology be isolated from other activities in the classroom” (Sprague 1999).

 

This week I was able to easily relate to this quote which comes from the views of Sprague (1999) and how constructivism is used in today’s classrooms with technology. I found this especially interesting because at the beginning of the year in-service for teachers, our superintendent spoke to us about inspiring learning. He encouraged us to be open to new ways of teaching students. One of his suggestions was to get away from “the way we learned” and embrace the new opportunities for teaching and learning with technology in today’s classrooms.

 

Building technology into the classroom activities also relates to the constructivist teacher builds on the student’s knowledge and expands on what they know (Abbott 2008).  By using this theory of constructivism and using the idea stated in the article, Learning as a Personal Event: A Brief Introduction to Constructivism, “Knowledge is constructed in multiple ways, through a variety of tools, resources, experiences, and contexts” (1999). A teacher can ignite learning with building on a student’s background knowledge and use technology as a tool to build on the current knowledge.  The newer version of Bloom’s Taxonomy embraces the use of technology tools to support today’s student by creating and engaging learning with high order thinking and technology.  See the comparison of the traditional and the new version of Bloom’s Taxonomy in the figure below (Schrum 2007).  While Bloom's was always a building threory, the updated version improves on the theory of building for today's student with technology. 

 

Abbott, J. (nd). Building Knowledge: Constructivism in Learning. [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F00R3pOXzuk.

 

Schrum, Lynne; Solomon, Gwen (2007-10-01). Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools (p. 30-32). International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Kindle Edition.

 

Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, (1999). Learning as a personal event: A brief introduction to constructivism. Retrieved from http://www.sedl.org/pubs/tec26/intro2c.html.

 Sprague, D. & Dede, C. (1999). If I teach this way, Am I doing my job: Constructivism in the classroom. Leading and Learning, 27(1). Retrieved from the International Society for Technology in Education at http://imet.csus.edu/imet9/280/docs/dede_constructivisim.pdf.