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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Ryan,
ReplyDeleteI like how you are giving your students real-world situations to learn from. It is also important to cross subjects when teaching, such as you mentioned connecting this lesson to a social studies lesson. Your constructionist approach of having the students create a spreadsheet for a bank account also will create meaningful experiences for your students. You could also have the students post their spreadsheets onto a wikipage where they can share ideas and the students can learn from each other's spreadsheets using different forms of technology.
Tiffany