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Constructivism is one of those ideas we throw around in educational circles without stopping to think about what we mean by it. They are the terms that have multiple meanings, are at once highly technical and common usage and are likely to cause debate and disagreements. Constructivism in particular carries a quantity of baggage with it. It is a term that is appropriated by supporters of educational approaches that are in stark contrast to the opposing view; constructivism vs didactic methods or direct instruction. The question is what are the origins of constructivism and does a belief in this as an approach to understanding learning necessitate an abandonment of direct instruction or is this a false dichotomy?

"With all the hoopla in regards to maker education and makerspaces I wanted to take a minute to share that this is not a new concept. Has it evolved - definitely! The process of making has been in our DNA since the dawn of human civilization to create tools for hunting and survival.  For many of us who grew up before the Internet, we spent countless hours playing with popular toys such as LEGO's, Lincoln Logs, Construx, and Erector Sets.  It has also been the livelihood for many people and a focus on hobbies or passion projects.  Now we have 3D printers, Arduino's, Raspberry Pi's, Little Bits, Makey-Makey's and an array of other innovative technologies to unleash the maker in all kids.  Regardless of the tool, the process is rooted in constructionism, which can be traced back to constructivism. Jonan Donaldson sums it up nicely: Terms such as collaborative learning, project-based learning, metacognition, inquiry-based learning, and so on, might be new to some audiences, but they have a relatively long and well-documented history for many educators. The most widely-known and promising pedagogical approach is constructivism grounded on the work of Piaget, Vygotsky, and Bruner. Constructionism brings creativity, tinkering, exploring, building, and presentation to the forefront of the learning process."

"Learning is one of those topics that the more you learn about it the more you want to learn. As teachers and educators we all have at least some basic knowledge of some of the foundational theories on Learning including Behaviourism, constructivism, constructivism, and the list of isms goes on and on. What is of particular interest to us is to explore how students learn and what strategies they use to learn. Knowing about such theories help us take informed decisions as to what can be done to meet the different learning styles of our students."

"​The purpose of Makerspace for Education is to provide educators with a hands-on, creative, user friendly, "anytime, anyplace", professional development tool that can be used as part of a community of practice. It allows educators to inform themselves, with tools at their fingertips, on the various aspects of the makerspace as they are ready. Using interactive tools that allow access to necessary information, directly from a user-friendly interface and based on the key frameworks of constructionism and constructivism, makerspace, design thinking and media literacies, teachers will have the tools they need to begin, or continue, their makerspace journeys. This site will evolve and grow as the participating educators add to the content and support the construction of knowledge. "

"Tracy Fullerton, director of the University of Southern California's Game Innovation Lab, wrote the textbook Game Design Workshop, now in its 3rd edition. Paper prototyping and iterative design is something that The Game Innovation Lab has done for over a decade. Many academic institutions use the methodology to create innovative games. In March 2014 I asked Fullerton how teachers could apply techniques such as paper prototyping and iterative design in the classroom. She pointed out how similar the process was to constructivism, or learning from doing. She said, "It's a version of constructivist education, more focused on systems thinking than just making.""

"Over the past six weeks in CEP 811 I have learned about constructivism and Maker Education by reviewing the research that supports this type of instruction. More importantly, during the past six weeks I have become a Maker as I created a remix video, an interactive cell model and a SketchUp of my ideal classroom. This week, I created an infographic using Easelly to inspire and encourage educators to incorporate a maker mentality in their classroom. My infographic focused on the following reasons why Maker Education can improve student learning. Maker Education provides authentic and relevant tasks. Maker Education is active and engaging. Maker Education builds community in classrooms, schools and beyond. Maker Education strengthens students metacognitive abilities. Maker Education supports student choice and leads to a type of personalized learning."

"Looking for ways to engage your students in deep learning? Hoping to hone your ability to help students truly understand what they are learning? Integrating making into your practice engages students, provides a true context for character development (think persistence), and most importantly, gives students experiences to learn core content and practices more deeply. Making is learner-centered. It is based on Seymour Papert's theory of constructionism (yes, based on Piaget's constructivism), which says that learners build their understanding more deeply if they create something to share with the world."

"According to Google Trends (see photo), a new term came into existence and quickly became synonymous with progressive education and a resurgence of STEAM education in America. That term is maker education, or makered for short, and can be seen in the graph as "born" according to google searches, around September of 2004. Although the exact number of makered programs is not currently known, schools that employ a progressive pedagogy (insert the word innovative for those working in the 21st century) or schools that make claims regarding the importance of differentiation, constructivism or experiential learning have built or are building makered programs. At first these programs seemed to be dependent on having state of the art Maker Spaces or FabLabs and high-tech tools, as most were found in well-funded private schools. That picture has changed rapidly in the past ten years since the makered movement has gained popularity, however. More and more public/charter schools and nonprofit programs are building programs for the average American child, that rival many private school programs. In fact, programs with limited budgets and space have reminded us that scarcity or "disability," are invaluable teachers in any good maker culture, as they breed creativity and self-reliance. Many of the makered programs serving lower income communities have access to mentors who never stopped working with their hands, even when it fell out of status in a consumer driven America in the 1980's (Curtis 2002). While lower income mentors may not know Python or what an Arduino is, they are skilled carpenters, mechanics, seamstresses, cooks and know what it means to be resourceful. "

George Siemens joined me for an interview about Connectivism, a theory about learning that draws on network theory, social networking, and social constructivism among other things.

TechYES TLC is all online, with nothing to install or download. It's completely new and (we hope) the best, most engaging project-based technology literacy curriculum out there. It's geared towards middle school, just like our TechYES Student Technology Literacy Certification model, but it goes deeper than just certification.