Firstly, I noticed that he had not yet developed his ability to self-talk. That little voice inside our heads that tells us not to speak too loudly to our neighbor in the cinema, or, in this boy's case not to make animal noises every few seconds during circle time. Since self-talk is a crucial part of constructing knowledge, I wondered whether he was finding it hard to build connections because of this deficit.
Soon we had him talking out the steps of each and every task and, before long, not only his vocabulary improved but also his ability to perform tasks independently. In the past, he had been addressed for his anti-social behavior on numerous occasions but stimuli-response behaviorism was having more of a negative effect.
His language development was holding him back from verbally interacting with other students. And his attention deficit was potentially eliminating any contributions he might have made if he were better able to follow the flow of the conversation. Nevertheless, with support, he was made to feel part of our class team. He was listened to and his peers (who were only 6) were amazingly patient and supportive in the way they not only included him but actually made sure he was fully understanding. The power of social constructivism was almost palpable.
Our young friend has made exceptional progress but so have his peers; having truly come to an understanding of their role as the More Knowledgeable Others (MKO).
Dr. Orey tells us the MKO can sometimes be a computer. He states that conversations help students concretize their learning and that these verbal interactions occur naturally when students are working together to construct an artifact. Multimedia technology supports the tenets of social constructivism in a myriad of ways. VoiceThread slideshows, for example, allow students to verbalize their thought process through a combination of visual and audio recordings. "Technology can play a unique and vital role in cooperative learning by facilitating group collaboration, providing structure for group tasks, and allowing members of groups to communicate even if they are not working face-to-face" (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn & Malenoski, 2007). There exists a wealth of websites and technology tools which allow the learning to go far beyond the classroom. Perhaps the most exciting, yet challenging, role of technology as an instrument of social constructivist learning is its global application. "(T)here are many examples of Websites that facilitate correspondence and project-based learning between students and other communities" (Pitler et al., 2007).
Knowledge is being shared, critiqued, revised, constructed in ways we never thought possible 20 years ago. As Siemens puts it information abundance may well be reshaping education.
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