Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Concept for my final project

I'm jumping for joy today because I've finally got a solid concept for my final individual project. It is meant to be a resource for teachers to learn about constructivist uses of technology in education, and I've been struggling with how to use stories to tell about different kinds classroom experiences with technology in a way that lets readers construct their own knowledge and perhaps build upon the website and tell their own stories.

I've loved the term bricolage (referred to by educators such as Seymour Papert, Gary Stager, Mitchel Resnick) which I think can, in this case, relate to what holistic educators believe about uniting the parts of a learner: body, mind and soul....hands, head, heart. Bricolage is defined as
a construction made of whatever materials are at hand; something created from a variety of available things, and aptly describes the idea that technology, in it's widely varied forms, can be used flexibly and purposefully by learners in order to construct knowledge. The idea of making something, called Constructionism by Seymour Papert, has been an important one to me, and will be reflected in my web project.

And so, I've got a title Bricolage: Connecting Playfully. Now, the scary part is to put my text (which I'm really good at collecting) into a story that somehow reflects me...my holistic attempt at constructing a product from a variety of available things! Yikes!

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