Donald Clark Plan B: 9 reasons why I am NOT a Social Constructivist - 1 views
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Evrim Baran on 27 Nov 13I am curious about what you think on this. Do you agree?
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sermin vardal ocakli on 27 Nov 13Hocam, I think this guy has an introvert personality. If he doesn't, perhaps he took a course from a teacher who made him feel fed up with pair and group work activities :-)) I have read the comments of other people under the article and I liked the one made by Doug. As Doug stated, Donald Clark compares different perspectives in a linear manner, but these thinkers represent different developmental periods of the theory. So he should have made comparisons considering the development of the theory to be more plausible. For his overall comments at the end of his article, I can say that what he mentions ("Those with good digital literacy, literacy, numeracy and other skills will have the social support, especially at home") is not something peculiar to the results of this theory. We used to have more segragations in the societies when former theories were dominant. So his comment doesn't seem logical to me. He also mentions that some learners like studying alone, which is not supported by this theory. Of course sometimes we need some isolation to think, analyze and synthesize, but this doesn't make us forget about the advantages of peer learning. There is a saying, "two heads are better than one". As we discussed in the classroom, we learn better when we are cognitively engaged and in my opinion, "engagement" requires contradictory or contributory comments made by other members of the society. It doesn't take place without interactions. To sum up, the theory may have some limitations, but I prefer it to the older ones :-)
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canannn on 27 Nov 13While reading I felt that the author is somewhat close to new ideas coming from other people, other thinkers, actually coming from the rest of the world. I mean as I understood at some parts, he is not open to accept the judgements or theories of some thinkers because what they said were already out there, they did not bring anything new. However I would name these people as men of action and thinkers ahead of their time. Because they draw attention to critical points that were ignored or missed by others. Maybe yes what they put forth were already out there or maybe some of their methods are not sufficient compared to our current methodologies but still they were the ones to see the complete picture and summarize things.
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Mustafa İlkhan on 27 Nov 13Thank you Evrim Hocam:) I strongly believe in community, wikinomy, we have to share, we can learn from each other in an informal environment but social constructivism is not working on me:) As he wrote "At University I learned almost everything in the quiet of my own room and the library. In corporate life, I relished the opportunity to learn on trains and planes, havens of forced isolation, peace and quiet. To this day I blog a lot and enjoy periods of intense research, reading and writing. It's not that I've learned everything in these contexts, only that they go against the idea that all learning needs to be social." I always got successful with deliberate practice and with "Learning by Doing". I don't like social media as well, there are many damages than benefits and I'm not so introvert, maybe a little:) but it's not about being introvert or extrovert, it's about talking or doing... I want to tell a real story of my friend who was a novice programmer in a company. There were many experts, novices and they were taking courses, online, offline, with collaboration every time. Everybody were sharing, commenting, discussing but he began a real life project first week by himself and after 6 month they were still asking to each other but he finished his project. After one year he was the best programmer in the company. And everyone began to ask to him. I asked him, he told that he believes in working until suffering and just doing:) And he added this interesting sentence "You will learn and you will be successful when you will be so related, so suffering that one day you will see dreams and solve problems about the topics in your sleep" My friend's opinions are maybe a little bit dramatic but I believe in "doing" too, at least it's working for us:)