I don’t know about you but reading Weller’s article on constructivism took me right back to the second-year educational philosophy we were required to take at the beginning of our BEd. I remember complaining about it to a friend who was well into her teaching career and she said that for the first ten years of your career you are just trying to keep the children alive and teach them whatever you can along the way, after that you get good enough at what you’re doing those theories start to come back to you and guide your teaching. I’m only just beginning my 5th year so I appreciate the opportunity for a refresher on these theories every once and a while.
Personally, I found the similarities more abundant than the differences. With regard to differences, constructivism is a pedagogy while connectivism is a series of principles (Weller, 2020). Constructivism is far more structured and based on the theories of many prominent educators of the past such as Vygotsky, Bruner, and Skinner (Weller, 2020). Where connectivism defines itself as chaotic and doesn’t seem to draw heavily on any past educational research. When it comes to similarities both very student-centred and honour the fact the learners bring something to the table and are not empty vessels we must fill with knowledge. Both require the student to do their own research in one way or another and focus on the connection between students to enhance and solidify learning. Finally, both methods really have no set timeline, constructivism in a way that learners are free from synchronous learning and free to interact with the material, resources and other learners at their own pace. Connectivism embodies these principles and takes it one step further allowing learning to continue far after the end of the course. In closing at first glance I thought these theories were very different but as I dove deeper into the article and wrote my blog post I realized that they are only really different on a structural level and are very similar in the way they encourage the learner to gather knowledge and interact-which I see as the more defining characteristic.
I chose the Edtech trend “videos” because I love to use them in my own teaching practice. In this day and age, there isn’t a topic you can’t find an age-appropriate video for. Youtube has everything and nothing engages kids like a video. I can stand in front of a class until I’m blue in the face talking about a concept while half of them aren’t paying attention or I can play a two-minute video and have a discussion about what they noticed or learned and get much better results. Videos also allow students to see things you wouldn’t necessarily be able to impress upon them with lecturing or books such as a tropical rainforest or how the earth revolves around the sun or what it’s like millions of kilometres under the ocean. Videos also give you the power to invite guest speakers into your classroom such as Chris Hatfield playing guitar to your students while he’s in outer space. In my opinion, videos are related to connectivism more than constructivism because if you are looking for information and come across videos you need to have the skills to decide whether it is relevant, factual information or not. Also, the process of finding videos can be slightly chaotic and follows the principle that knowledge and people are distributed (Weller, 2020) and that the learner has to search to find what they are looking for. Weller sums it up perfectly when he said “explanations that can be shared and embedded easily-met a great educational demand” (2018) and they continue to do so today.
Bibliography
Weller, M. (2020). Chapter 4 – Constructivism. 25 Years of Edtech. AU Press. Retrieved from https://read.aupress.ca/read/25-years-of-ed-tech/section/0442be0f-0347-40eb-9c19-de80b7e13d47#ch04
Weller, M. (2020). Chapter 17 –Connectivism. 25 Years of Edtech. AU Press. Retrieved from https://read.aupress.ca/read/25-years-of-ed-tech/section/198057f5-1a3e-4436-a4b8-c6e1a3e0bd69#ch17
Weller, M. (2018, August). Twenty Years of Edtech. EDUCAUSE Review, 53(4). Retrieved fromhttps://er.educause.edu/articles/2018/7/twenty-years-of-edtech
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