Week 4-old

Constructionism

You will watch a video on “constructionism” and constructionism connects to modeling, computational thinking, and education. The lecture content is further explored in a reading assignment on constructionism. You will then put this theory into practice by programming a model in Toolblox to simulate the spread of a contagious disease and program your own extension to the model.

Wendy Huang and Daniel Wendel presents on constructionism in education. The video also includes a demonstration of how to use Toolblox to program an epidemic model.

Download the Constructionism Video (66 MB, ZIP)

Assignment 1

Read the article “Constructionism”. Respond to question in the forum: How would you convince a teacher that constructionism is important for teaching and learning? What examples would you give?

Forum: “Constructionism” reading assignment

Assignment 2

Program an Epidemic model in Toolblox by following the directions on the epidemic programming tutorial. Then you will choose or invent one extension to program. There will be an optional live chat and forum to get programming help. Finally you will write a reflection about the activity and provide a link to your Toolblox epidemic model in the forum.

Forum: Reflections on programming assignment