Thoughts on Technology and Constructionism

In one of the readings this week, "Generating and Testing Hypotheses", the emphasis of creating questions and problems, and then how to solve them, is presented. This is something that I have used for many years in my science classroom. But, not until recently have I been able to use technology to achieve this. I have always used the recommendations given in the reading. The first one being, to make sure that the students can explain their hypotheses and conclusions. The second being, to use a variety of structured tasks to guide the students through generating and testing hypotheses. But now, I am able to use technology to achieve these recommendations. In the past I have used simulation software and simulation games to enhance and promote the creation of questions and hypotheses and to carry out the experimentation to find the results. Then the students would analyze the results and create new questions. This is one of the tasks presented in this chapter, that being "Experimental Inquiry". Some of the software that I used allowed the students to use their background knowledge, make decisions, and then see the outcome of their hypotheses.
One piece of software that I have used is called "Food Chain", put out by Cajun Games. It is set up as a board game in which the players make decisions on what and who other animals eat, or if they eat at all, and what the outcomes are based on these decisions. This was great when I was teaching Ecology. Another one is "Sim Farm", put out by Maxis. In this simulation software, students created a farm and made all the decisions to run the farm. As you would imagine this got into more than just how to grow crops but also, economic, labor, and market decisions. I use this when teaching a class on farming, which is what my Bachelors degree is in. Both of these programs had students create artifacts and learn from them as you do in constructionism. They were both also able to go on for extended periods of time culminating in realistic products or presentations from a series of artifacts building one on the other. I don't know if these programs are still available since it has been a number of years since I had obtained them.
What is good about simulations and games is that you can utilize them in a classroom with limited resources. I used these that I mentioned with the students in groups so everyone could take part even though I only had access to two computers. On the other hand Data Collection tools and software usually require more resources that aren't usually obtainable to many classrooms. But with the resources Data Collection tools and software can be quite useful.