Incredible.

I’m not ashamed to quote it - from Sarah:

And I’m simply floored at all this site has led me to by way of deeper thought, links, connections. You could take every workshop they’ve had me in for 5 years and not match five sentences here.

Doug’s too modest to mention it, but I’m sure he would say that it’s because of you, the readers and members of this network that make it great.

STORY
I read somewhere about a teacher who was teaching her class about how we generate heat and about temperature. Instead of the usual (quicker) way of doing some worksheets and trying out reading a thermometer for a few days, she decided to start with a question. She asked the kids how to make the thermometer change. They suggested that it needed to be warmed up and so they wanted to wrap it in their coats, so she said that they would try it over recess, so they took the thermometer and wrapped it in a coat and recorded before and after. No change. This went on for a week and the students kept suggesting different things-How about a hat? Maybe it is not thick enough-two coats, leaving it overnight, etc… Finally someone had an Aha moment and said that maybe it is not a coat or hat that creates the warmth, maybe our bodies do it and the clothes hold it in. Now this was a piece of knowledge that the class will never forget. This is the description of constructivism that has stuck with me. When you truly experience something it makes much more sense than when you do worksheets or someone tells you something that you memorize.

THOUGHT
As an adult I realize that a lot of why I didn’t continue in Math and Science had to do with not “getting” it. Now I can see the beauty of math and the importance of science. Then my grades were good, but I could only replacate what my teacher said to do (i.e. the steps of long division), I did not really know why I should do any of it.

Janice

I went back to look at the article they want to link to, and…I kind of liked it. I’m mentioning it here because it’s on topic, and was prompted by a course I took related to science inquiry last year.

This subject is ripe for repeated treatments, I guess. In my web ramblings I’ve discovered some other things that have sent new ideas spinning for me, as well.

The question of what constructivism is makes my head spin. What does anyone mean when they use such big words? We have to be careful when we listen to each other so we don’t talk past our intended meanings. I suppose constructivism might be both method and theory, strategy and tactic, philosophy and approach, politics and religion… depending on what we want to do with it.