Blog 3- Chapter 5

In terms of the learning theories we learned, unlike behaviorism which particularly focuses on the performance while ignoring the thinking process or information processing which emphasizes on mental organization and a change of knowledge in mind, David Jonassen addressed in the article that constructivist conceptions of learning assume that knowledge is individually constructed and socially co-constructed by learners based on their interactions in the world. The goal of the learner is to solve certain problem, what's more important, it's the problem that drives the learning. Then developing a CLE that stands for Constructivist Learning Environments plays a key role in the whole process, especially in providing interesting, appealing and engaging problems to solve, case studies, information resources based on the problems. In addition, CLEs can provide conversations and collaboration tools for learners to work together and share the same goal of solving certain problem. In order to better support our students to learn in CLEs, modeling, coaching and scaffolding are needed when implementing the activities.

Thanks to Internet which is described as a worldwide library, our students and we ourselves get accustomed to searching the information by, for example, simply "googling" it. However, since the there's too much information exposed on the Internet, one of the learning goals is the information literacy, which means for both students and teachers, we'd better not only learn how to access information, but assess information carefully by evaluating the useful and high-quality information among the boundless resources as well. In Chapter 5, it's interesting to find out that the New York Times reports of reading shows that both children and adolescents spend more time every day reading online than reading books. It seems like a fact that we have to have the competencies of an array of new technology-based literacies and the capability to search and evaluate information from online resources.

By reading through this Chapter, I learned the useful resources I've never used before, such as Flickr and LibriVox. Besides, I explored varieties of Search Sites designed for students  which I've never heard of. Speaking of plagiarism, I believe that students should be very clear that plagiarism are not allowed not only for their assignments but even out of school.

It's true that Internet provides us a huge platform to easily get information, multiple resources and to interact with people around the world. As teachers, it's our job to support students with effective tools and teach them to screen out the useful information they really need by ensuring safe online experiences for students.

Questions:

1. Since we can do almost everything online, does it mean reading books and hand writing not important anymore?

2. How can we prevent the students from relying on websites like Wikipedia too much?