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Dear friends, I strongly recommend you to watch this film. It is about a school (like hababam sınıfı). You will see different approaches against students. Examples of radical behaviorism and in part constructivism can be found. It will be enjoying to watch and contrast these two approaches. Besides educational aspects, this film is so touching. Please, prepare your handkerchiefs :) Original language: French Subtitle: English Link to watch: http://filenuke.com/ulgl9j1ux08p (click to "free" option)

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anh7Enari2U (Eng sub)

Dinçer, I will watch it this week!

Here is my constructivist environment example. In the past, I installed the second life software considering that it was a game. I roamed and roamed in worlds that already were created, chatted with people in another countries with my avatar. Then I thought that it was boring. It was just like sitting on Sunshine and talking with friends. Why I had to do this via my computer? This video shows us how Second Life Worlds can be used to create constructivist learning environments. In the video, a Second Life World that was prepared by a group of people called TELLS TEAM is presented. In this world, you can attend lectures, have group meetings for discussion, work on simulations and role plays whereever you are. All participants including the teacher has an avatar and walking, sitting, chatting as if they were in the same room. In this project, learners are active participants. They roam, talk, immediately can fly to role playing sessions and etc. Teacher is only responsible to present initial knowledge. I could not find how they evaluate the learners. However, it is up to you. This environment is just a tool. You can arrange your role plays, your simulations, and also your assesment. Also they have some guides to use the environment effectively on this web site: https://sites.google.com/site/secondlifeuwnshss/Home

It says that children can learn with internet without any intervention from outside -like a teacher. When the topic is not defined, children can learn what they want. But for some specific topics, they at least need the very first idea -a question, sometimes even a pre-designed system of information and instruction. Are we too much interfering to students' learning process?

Such educational frameworks support the trend of shift from teacher-centeredness to student-centeredness. In the past, when we need to ask something, we asked to our elders- in school, to teachers. Now, we have an additional elder, the internet. It can answer almost anything. In that sense, the impact of the technology can not be ignored. The idea of providing internet access to places that is scarce in terms of teachers is reasonable - which also supports the idea of distance education. Besides, bringing technology is easier and cheaper than bringing a teacher with resources. However, we still need teachers as -cliche but vital term- "facilitators" and regulators in self-learning process. It is necessary for constructivism as well as child-driven education or for any other self-learning methods. Someone is needed for wrapping-up the knowledge gained, for assessing the results, for remedying circumstances that obstruct the learning process, for deciding goals or organizing goals to be attained, and for secure and heuristic browsing on the internet. In that sense, I support the idea of "self organized learning environments" as Mitra offers, but also I contend that there should be teachers around these environments for facilitating. In short, we should not quit important elements of education while trying to make it better.

I believe although computers and instructional softwares are amazing to enhance the effectiveness of instruction, they are not enough. They are always limited. It is impossible to load them all possible questions of students and their responses. Moreover, none of the computers or softwares would be able to fulfill students' emotional and motivational needs. There is also the uniqueness of the students; not all of the students would enjoy a computer-based education. Lastly, as a science educator when I think for my area; it is never the same to make an experiment on computer and in a laboratory. Students learn better when they are actively engaged in an experiment and seethe results with their eyes.

It is one to one lesson and there is an activity to divide 4,5 into 3/4. The teacher gives the control of learner's understanding to learners and only guides the student according to gain the objective by asking effective questions, following step by step. However, there should be more than one learner, at least two, because the learner looks like a little bit not into the situation. Maybe with a friend they could better understand.

This is a lesson plan I prepared during my last year of college while I was taking school experience course and attending a public school as an intern. My proffessor Jale Çakıroğlu also liked this lesson plan very much and published it in her book named "Bilimin Doğası ve Öğretimi". Moreover, I also implemented it this semester with preservice teachers at METU. I took activity from http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/gr.fs.fd.html and adapted it into Turkish. I also made some changes to make it more appropriate for 6th graders. In this activity, students are active all the time. The teacher only provides them the required materials and answer their quesions to guide them. The students work in small groups to learn the nature of science aspects with an acitivity where they act as they are scientists. The evaluation is process based not product based and this is clearly explained to the students. Since I prepared this lesson plan, actually implemented it and saw that it worked perfectly I would not change anything, but I always welcome your suggestions. :))

Gamze, thanks for sharing the lesson plan. This is an exemplary lesson plan and let's talk about it in class.

Students work in pairs to research and present findings. This video shows interviews with students engaged in the learning process. Notice the high level of involvement and enthusiasm.

The video displays an activity that students are reinforced to produce in terms of constructivist approach. I know the teacher and his ways of integration of the methods. He is mostly effective in such cases, and does not lose the control in any circumstance. In the video, there seems a compexity among students in terms of noise and crowd. However, it was one of the disadvantages of taking the whole class to video. They should present what they have done so far. One of the best thing in the video is peer evaluation that we frequently use.

Constructivist teacher and her behaviors accordingly are presented in the article.

In this link you can find brief information about the theories we reviewed so far, their comparison, weaknesses or strenghts, atomic theory as well as some brief knowledge about theorists. This may be useful for completing the table. :)))

This is our comparison table by Dinçer, Hatice, Sinem, Burcu, Defne :)

Defne, It is better to address them in the table. Perhaps, you can add couple points there.

Evrim Hocam, I addressed to the specific approaches in the table as you wished:)