How is knowledge relevant to math or science constructed? How is it possibly generated in these networked communities? Provide examples to illustrate your points.
Virtual field trips or VFTs provide teachers with the opportunity to take learning beyond the confines of the classroom walls. Spicer & Stratford, 2001, discuss various virtual field trips. They explain that an online expedition or exploration could be “a way of replacing what they perceived as an outmoded, expensive, risky and difficult to manage/timetable biology teaching experience, namely the ‘real’ field trip,” thus, allowing students to construct scientific knowledge to be constructed without physically taking students outside of the classroom. They also through their various researched studies that it was “found that use of VFT increased the ability of students to solve ‘real world problems’” (Spicer & Stratford, 2001).
Knowledge can generally be constructed through VFTs, but Spicer and Stratford (2001) suggest that while it may not specifically replace a real field trip, VFTs may enhance a real field trip by preparing them for what they were going to experience and allowing them to build a baseline of knowledge prior to physically visiting a site.
Virtual field trips are something I would find very useful in my own personal context of teaching right now. I am in a very isolated, rural place in Labrador. There are very limited opportunities for my students to have field trips. In fact, they don’t really have field trips at all. They may have an opportunity to travel with sports teams, but in those cases they are not travelling for a truly educational experience. A virtual field trip would provide these students with the opportunity to be exposed to many different ideas and concepts they wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to. Textbooks often provide students with pictures and examples but they aren’t meaningful to many of these students because they’ve never had the chance to see or experience these things. These students also have many conceptual challenges in learning because they don’t have a lot of real-life experiences to disprove some of their misconceptions. Driver et al. (1994) state “the core commitment of a constructivist position [is] that knowledge is not transmitted directly from one knower to another, but is actively build up by the learner.” By providing students with VFTs, they can construct their knowledge, whether it be in math or science, instead of just relying on the knowledge being given by the instructor.
References:
Driver, R., Asoko, H., Leach, J., Mortimer, E. & Scott, P. (1994). Constructing scientific knowledge in the classroom. Educational Researcher, 23(7), 5-12.
Spicer, J. I. & Stratford, J. (2001). Student perceptions of virtual field trip to replace a real field trip. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 17(1), 345-354.