Constructivism

Module 3 Blog
Responded to http://holly-shumaker.blogspot.com/
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Constructivism
Reflect on Rheingold’s video, and then respond to the following:
Do you believe that humans have a basic instinct to “interact and work as a group,” as Rheingold proposed in his discussion of the evolution of Wikipedia as a collectively developed encyclopedia? How can technology facilitate collaboration among learners based on constructivist principles?

I do believe that humans have a basic instinct to interact and work as a group. I believe that we as human have the desire and urge to communicate, share ideas and discuss various topics. You can see these desire and urge do interact in the personal lives of people and in their careers, such as various businesses and education. Many times this collaboration is to share ideas, accomplish an objective or even just to vent. In the past human focus was more on self-interest when considering business and education, but now throughout evolution the process of cooperation, collective action and communication have emerged and expanded due to new technologies and other worldly advances. In the world today, “self interest is not always the dominating factor” states Rheingold (Rheingold, 2008).

“New forms of cooperation created by new technologies create new forms of wealth” (Rheingold, 2008).

I believe that technology plays a major role in the expansion of collaboration among learners. Therefore, I think that technology facilitates collaboration based on constructivist principles by allowing learners to develop deep thinking and a knowledge base that encourages the learner to generate, learn, or create new knowledge. Technologies, such as blogs, wikis, Google docs and various others allow learners to collaborate no matter their location or the time and they can easily manage work while collaborating. Through these technologies, the learner can collaborate with peers around the world and even experts that can enable the student to have authentic learning experiences. Overall, technology can allow the learner opportunities to actively engage with the content and make real life meaningful connections.


Rheingold, Howard. (2008). Way-New collaboration. Retrieved April 5, 2010 at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration.html