By: Katelyn Hallis &

1. Tying Technology to Constructivism By: Katelyn Hallis &

2. CTGV • CTGV=The Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt • Research team located at the Learning Technology Center at Vanderbilt University • Helped to establish some practical guidelines for integrating technology based on constructivist principles • Used concepts introduced by Vygotsky; Whitehead; and Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989)Developed several technology products modeling this approach that achieved widespread use in American education

3. Key Terms • Cognition: The mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment. • Constructivism: The term refers to the idea that learners construct knowledge for themselves---each learner individually (and socially) constructs meaning---as he or she learns. Each learner takes responsibility for their own learning and takes learning into their own hands.

4. Preventing Inert Knowledge • Inert knowledge: “knowledge that can usually be recalled when people are explicitly asked to do so, but is not used spontaneously in problem solving even though it is relevant” • Without a direct relationship to children’s personal experience, inert knowledge would be the result • … In Other Words: Students never apply the knowledge learned because they could not see the relationship to problems in real life

5. Situated Cognition & Anchored Instruction • “Anchored Instruction provides a way to recreate some of the advantages of apprenticeship training in formal educational settings involving groups of students” • Preventing the problem of inert knowledge • Authentic Experiences • Practical Apprenticeships • Anchoring instruction in highly visual problem-solving environments • Learners consider important because it makes the connection between school learning and real life activities

6. Building Knowledge Through Generative Activities • Learning is most meaningful when it builds (scaffolds) on experiences they already have • More likely to remember knowledge that they “generate” themselves • Rather than they receive pasively

7. The Jasper Woodbury Problem Solving Series is a 12 video-disc adventure based on mathematical problem finding and problem solving. Each adventure is designed to promote problem solving, reasoning, communication and making connections to other areas such as science, social studies, literature and history. The Adventures of Jasper Woodbury materials attempt to stimulate learning in a natural learning environment rather than a school learning environment. They provide an authentic task in order to show how school knowledge can be used in the real world. It was created in 1989.

8. The Young Children’s Literacy Series, from 1993, is a multimedia program for beginning readers. It is a video story created in the children’s own words. Every student in a group contributes to every page, using words and music to imagine their own creation. A video-based story tells a tale that leads to asking the children to help write a new book with the main character.

9. Schools For Thought is an effort to restructure the whole school day in middle school, integrating the Jasper Project, the Fostering Communities of Learners (FCL) and the Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environments project (CSILE). Students would be in learning communities, using problem and project-based teaching.