Constructionism uses for Excel

Two weeks ago I talked about using Excel as a behaviorist learning tool. Today I am going to look at using Excel as a constructionist learning tool. Constructionism is “a theory of learning that states people learn best when they build an external artifact or something they can share with others” (Laureate, 2009). In constructionism students create something in order to learn.

In the book Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, Malenoski, 2007), an example is given using Excel software to teach about investments. In the example the a social studies teacher creating a lesson on economics set up a spreadsheet that has three savings plans for students to choose from. Students can put values into each savings plan and see how much money they will have in 30 years. The first plan has an investment of $1000 a year into a bank account with 4% interest. The second and third have a one time investment of $10000 into accounts with 8% and 12% interest. The main focus of this activity was to show students the importance of investing, especially early in life.

For my Algebra class, I like this lesson as a beginning lesson that I could expand. For a social studies lesson, the actual math is a secondary function. For my Algebra class I need to make the math the main focus. I would start my lesson with a spreadsheet similar to the one described above. I would then have my students transition to a spreadsheet that allows them to put different values into an interest equation to get out different totals. Students would spend some time looking at how changing each variable affects the total in the account. Once students are comfortable with the equation and how it works I would have them create their own formula to find the total after a certain length of time and a formula that would find the amount in an account after each year. This creation of their own formulas would help students to better understand how the interest formulas work.

I could expand this lesson even further with my pre-calculus students who study annuities. In that class I could have students create a spreadsheet that would keep track of a retirement account if additional money is put in every month. Students could then use different numbers for monthly deposits and interest rates so they could see what they would need to retire with x amount of dollars.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. Baltimore: Author.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Virtual Field Trips and other Cognitive Technology Tools

Virtual field trips are an excellent way to help students learn information and ready their minds to learn additional information in the future. A virtual field trip gives students a strong episodic memory that is easy for them to recall later. This episodic memory can be linked to all of the important information covered over the course of a topic. For example, if you were studying the economics of supply and demand you could take students on a virtual field trip of a candy making factory or some other entertaining factory. Students would have a fun experience learning about how candy is made and you could tie in the ideas of supply and demand as you are leading the class through the virtual field trip.

Virtual field trips can also be used as a catalyst to get students to retain information for much broader topics. A virtual tour of Boston of 1775 or of Washington’s plantation could be used as a catalyst for a Revolutionary War topic. Long term memory is stored in networks of information and students could use the virtual field trip to tie together a network of Revolutionary War information in their long term memories. Virtual field trips also give students a visual to tie to the information they are learning. According to Paivio’s duel coding hypothesis information is stored as both images and text so having visuals becomes important of the storing of information into memory.

I wanted to finish this post with a quick discussion about a few other cognitive technology tools that can help students process and retain information.

Using video clips is a great way to connect learning to something visual. Videos can also create an episodic memory for students if they enjoy the video. Math and science classes could easily go a step further and have the students create videos that show a mathematical or scientific concept in action. Students can then apply their math knowledge to the video they created.

Graphic organizers help students create network connections between different parts of the same topic. Using graphic organizers is an excellent way to show students how different ideas are connected together. Inspiration software is a good graphic organizer building software and FreeMind is a free graphic organizer building software that can be found at http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page.

Class made wikis are another tool that can create connections between topics in a unit and give students an episodic memory. There are several ways to create a wiki as a class. One method would be to assign different topics to groups, pairs, or individuals and have them research and create a wiki page for that topic. Once all of the pages are created the class can view each page and make a concept map that connects all of the topics. Once the concept map is agreed upon the pages of the wiki can be linked together to match the concept map.

Using Excel as a Behaviorist Learning Activity

I stumbled across an interesting way to motivate students this week and when I say “stumbled across” I mean that I read about it as part of my assignment for my current technology class. The idea comes from a book called “Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works” by Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, and Malenoski. The idea is a fairly simple one. Most students think that their successes or failures in school are based on their intelligence, their genes, or just dumb luck (which is one reason why students love multiple choice tests). This is shown often in math class where students make comments like “I am not good at math” or “my parents weren’t good at math so I am not good at math either”. This idea is fostered in many ways, one of which is through parents. I often have parents come in for conferences and the first thing they do is make excuses for their child’s poor grades because the parents weren’t good at math either. Often these conferences are at the beginning of the year before their child even has a grade.

The solution to this is to show students that their successes and failures are based, not on intelligence, but on effort. When a student sees that putting forth effort leads to success and that they can reap the rewards that come with that success, they will be motivated to continue putting effort into their studies. One way to accomplish this is to use an Excel spreadsheet. You can identify ways in which students can put forth effort in your class (taking notes, interacting with other students, homework, studying, class work, etc.) and create a four point scale for each of those categories. Each week you can have your students rate their own effort and take a quiz or a test on the material covered that week. In the Excel spreadsheet students can put in their weekly scores and get a total effort score and a test score. Students can monitor their effort score and test score over the course of several weeks and see if their scores get better with more effort. In addition, students can create a chart comparing effort and grade to see the connection between the two. This is a good behaviorist learning activity that shows students the positive and negative consequences of their effort. It is also a good way to integrate technology into the classroom. One related idea that I need to think on more is creating surveys using www.surveymonkey.com, having students take the surveys, and putting the results in a spreadsheet. These surveys could be surveys on effort or could be surveys on any topic for which you could put the results in a spreadsheet.

Just this week I ran into one of my students and her mother. This student has struggled in my class all year and has continually said she couldn’t do well in math. I finally got her to believe that she was smart and if she started trying and focusing more in class she would find that she would remember things better. Recently she has been doing really well during our spiral reviews because she has confidence that she can remember how to solve problems we have done in the past. When I talked with the mother of this student she told me that her daughter was running around telling everyone about the good grade she got in her math class this quarter. It is nice to see what a little motivation and positive reinforcement can do.

Since I am on the topic of motivation and Excel I want to continue thinking along those lines. About half of my students do not have computers at home so I can not integrate technology into their homework. I can however use technology once students get back to school with their homework. I can set up a spreadsheet that keeps track of student grades throughout the quarter as assignments, test, and quizzes are completed. Each week when we do our effort spreadsheets we could also update our grade spreadsheets with all of the homework assignments that were completed by each student and any additional scores that they received throughout the week. This way students can see each week what their grade is and how much of an effect one zero or one 100% score can make for their grade. Seeing the clear consequences of a good or a bad score should motivate most students to make sure their scores are good.

Hopefully some of these ideas can be useful for you,

Ryan