EDUC 639 Week 3 Most Important Blog

I have found that most distance education courses are formatted with constructivist learning theories in mind.  I believe that is one of the most important theories in relation to online or distance education courses.  In these courses the students are required to be their own teacher in a way and seek the information.  The students must be self motivated to complete the assignments and do well on them.  As the saying goes the instructor in the constructivist environment is merely the guide on the side as opposed to the sage on the stage that does only lecturing.  In a constructivist classroom the students are challenged to think critically to solve problems, and I believe this helps them to develop higher order thinking skills and reach into the top 3 categories of Bloom’s Taxonomy.  Although a constructivist learning approach is positive, personally I find that distance education is more of a challenge.  In distance learning it is more difficult to develop a personal connection with the instructor or other students in the class.  This can sometimes make students feel isolated in their coursework.  More effort is needed on the teacher’s part to make personal connections with the students.  I believe that the constructivist learning theory has changed my view of the classroom to a large extent due to the fact that I was never exposed to anything like it growing up that I knew of.  I later realized that my elementary years were much more like a constructivist classroom than I knew since I was homeschooled.  I believe that in the future I would like to incorporate more activities into my teaching that allow the students to be more independent in discovering new information than me simply telling them.  This works quite well in lower elementary classrooms, and allows the students to explore the world around them and make discoveries on their own.  In the future I would like to do more research on using constructivist theories with educational technology in the classroom.