Constructivist pedagogies with digital technology

I have embedded lots of Constructivist cues in this cartoon animation. The script tells us that students are collaborating on a research investigation to construct their knowledge (Bower, 2017). The "hint" in the second frame, together with the image of a scaffold, thinking points and research questions referred to in the in the final frame, represent a constructivist teacher's scaffolding (Bower, 2017). The teacher proffers enough information to engage the students, without taking away the opportunity for knowledge construction.

The students are working in round-table groups and clearly engaged in active discussion, using their laptops for internet research. The image of the group putting together the jigsaw also alludes to students being active participants in socially constructing knowledge (Harasim, 2017). OneNote is referred to as the group collaboration space and for digital disbursement of learning materials. Stellarium is a powerful simulation tool that students will use to construct their knowledge about astronomy and the solar system. Students can use this software to discover knowledge themselves, rather than being passive recipients of “facts” (Bower, 2017).

I've included some screen snips to demonstrate the fabulous images that are possible and you can scroll down to read my animation script. I enjoyed putting my animation together, however, was a little frustrated that it wasn't until I'd done most of the work and had the last step of recording my voice over to go, when I realised that this option was not available on the free version.

Stellarium: Turning your device into a virtual planetarium

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MySimpleShow Script

Let's have a peek inside my Year 11 Science classroom where I use constructivist pedagogy, enhanced with technology. Today we're looking at Astronomy. To kick off our research project, we're going to investigate what we mean by heliocentrism and how is this different from geocentrism... I'll give you a hint... The ROOT-WORD of heliocentric is HELIO which comes from the Greek word HELIOS meaning SUN. Heliocentrism and Geocentrism are two different models of the universe. We're going to divide up into groups and collaborate to research what these two terms mean, who were the major theorists of each model, and how did knowledge about the universe evolve to our current understanding. We'll check out a cool app called Stellarium that turns your device into a virtual planetarium. We'll use it to investigate the concept of the celestial sphere, which is linked to heliocentrism. There are lots of cool features and operations possible with this app, you can even investigate Aboriginal astronomy. Have a look in our class OneNote, you'll find some thinking points and research questions to get you started, as well as a Stellarium "how to" guide. Using your group collaboration spaces on OneNote you can start sharing ideas, organise your research , and allocate tasks within your group. Have fun constructing your understanding about the solar system!

#constructivism #physics #astronomy #stellarium #mysimpleshow #OneNote #Pedagogy