e-Learning Ecologies MOOC’s Updates

Tools for Multimodal Learning for the Constructivists in the 21st Century

Media embedded September 27, 2016

Constructivism is an educational theory based on the belief that learning is a process in which the new knowledge is constructed upon the previous knowledge through active participation of the learners. It requires the learners to make meaning of the new knowledge and find connections with the previous knowledge. In the 21st century, this constructivity can be achieved by the use to multimodality.

Multimodality is a way to communicate in the 21st century by using different ways to communicate a message or knowledge other than just text. This can include an infographic, video clip, chart, color, strong image, typography, and etc. People in the 21st century are constantly bombarded by the use of these different medes of communication, for example, the use of emoji to express our feelings, our ability to share video clips and images on a social-media, and etc. There are many opportunities for us to express ourselves or our knowledge through the use of different modes than before and it also gets easier to create those media by ourselves. Most mobile devices have a built-in camera that we can directly upload to Youtube or Facebook. We no longer need to know how to use Photoshop as there are a lot of photo editing tools that we could use for free and with just a couple of clicks we could alter an image that looks as if we were using a professional photo-editing software. Making a movie has never been this easy, even an elementary school student knows how to edit a movie. The ability to use different modes of communication is an important part and an essential skill of this century.

Multimodality is tightly connected to technology and there are various technology tools that students can use in the classroom to exhibit multimodal learning.

  1. iPad- students can be able to mirror the iPad to the projector to display text, images, and relevant video contents to illustrate their understanding. 
    Media embedded September 30, 2016
  2. Explain Everything- students can screencast their knowledge and understanding using images, colors, pointers, texts, and videos. 
    Media embedded September 30, 2016
  3. Google classroom- students can be actively participating in a discussion by incorporating different types of media in their posts.
  4. e-Folio- an online platform that students can collate their work to illustrate the process as well as the product. The e-Folio pieces can be a scanned document, video clips of the process, relevant images to illustrate either their learning.

We are no longer restricted by texts. Constructivists of the 21st century will naturally facilitate multimodal learning in the classroom so the students can contextualize and construct the new knowledge by using appropriate technological knowledge to create as well as to communicate a new understanding.

Resources

https://www.learning-theories.com/constructivism.html

https://www.learning-theories.com/vygotskys-social-learning-theory.html

http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=jmle

https://www.learning-theories.com/multimodality-kress.html

http://thenextweb.com/creativity/2014/02/24/9-browser-based-photo-editing-tools/#gref

http://explaineverything.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUG9w81TQc8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_ruUC0rLZk