Constructivist teaching – virtually

Here’s a video of a music teacher in Newfoundland who teaches students across the miles.

From a teaching point of view, there are many noteworthy things in this video that are applicable to any subject, whether virtual or not.

  1. The teacher’s personal passion for the subject.
  2. The teacher’s focus on connecting the student’s existing interests and experiences to the class material.
  3. The teacher’s interest in finding tools that allow students to construct final products that are meaningful to the student and that can be shared with others.

The fact that this teacher uses a particular blog tool or sound editor is not as important as the fact that he makes these choices to leverage the students ability to produce something beyond the blog and beyond the mere output of a sound file.

Blogging is not a magic tool. Just the mere act of blogging is not constructive, it’s just another way to write. There are blogs being assigned to students today that are the virtual equivalent of the 5 paragraph essay–unauthentic and completely lacking value in the real world.

Creating a constructivist learning experience still takes a teacher who can create a learning environment, virtual or not, that pushes students to see themselves as capable of producing something of value to themselves and to others, and then facillitates them doing just that.

Thanks to Kelly Christopherson who posted this (and where it’s from) on his blog on Classroom 2.0.

One Reply to “Constructivist teaching – virtually”

  1. See Bill’s post on “Guitar” by Funtwo, http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2006/07/end-of-school-as-we-know-it.html

    “Is a virtuoso performance on youtube – the boy in a baseball cap in his bedroom playing his electric guitar: Pachebel’s Canon Rock – by a 13 yo (guess) with 6.5 million views , 14.3 thousand comments and favourited 39 thousand times an implied condemnation of School as we know it and a harbinger of a new education system?”

    Note, this young man’s amazing guitar playing has now been viewed 20,013,239 times.

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