From Digital Storytelling to Reflective Portfolios: Constructionism, Maker Spaces and the Liberal Arts

Creating digital and physical children’s books in a German class at Rhodes College

I’m excited to just have been invited to give a new lecture at Grinnell College. I chose “From Digital Storytelling to Reflective Portfolios: Constructionism, Maker Spaces and the Liberal Arts” as the talk’s topic because it allows me to combine several aspects that I’ve been interested in and passionate about both theoretically and practically. For example, this semester my students are using reflective digital portfolios in my language pedagogy course, and we will be collaboratively building a video game for language learning. It’ll provide an opportunity for my students to apply the theoretical concepts they have learned to a real-world learning space building scenario. So as I’m preparing the lecture, I wanted to write a brief blog post about my thoughts on the topic.

First of all, what do I mean by constructionism? I follow Seymor Papert’s (1991) view:

“Constructionism – the N Word as opposed to the V word – shares constructivism’s connotation of learning as building ‘knowledge structures’ irrespective of the circumstances of the learning. It then adds the idea that this happens especially felicitously in a context where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity, whether it’s a sand castle on the beach or a theory of the universe.”  (p.1)

Gingerbread house building contest

The power and agency that lie in the act of creating something are especially appealing in the context of language learning because language learners often have difficulty expressing themselves to the extent they are used to in their L1. There are also numerous advantages to creating a “finished product,” ranging from publicity and advocacy advantages to externalizing knowledge and learning. Ackermann (1996) posits:

“Once projected out and ‘objectified,’ personal experience can be newly reengaged. People can dive back into the situation of interest to them and get immersed at the cost of losing themselves one more time, until they eventually reemerge and, once more, look at things from a distance. It is this dance between diving-in and stepping-out that keeps us connected, while at the same time, enables us to grant the world an existence that goes beyond the momentary relation with it.” (p. 28)

Students creating books (Memphis Cartonera)

Another project my Language Learning Center

(LLC) has facilitated is “Memphis Cartonera.” Students create books out of recycled cardboards, written in Spanish, and then shared with the campus and wider community. We had been publishing books for children using Storybird (see posts #1 and post #2), but this projects transformed our Center into a different kind of maker space (see photo).

Over the years, we have supported a number of constructionist projects in our LLC: digital storytelling projects (e.g. this one about immigrant experiences), gingerbread course building contests, our annual international photo contest, and our our virtual city building simulation.

As Ackermann (2004) states, “[t]ools, media, and cultural artefacts are the tangible forms, through which we make sense of our world and negotiate meaning with others.” (p. 17) It also creates new ways of engaging with language learning, reinvigorates our community of practice, and transforms our physical and conceptual language learning spaces at Rhodes.

Memphis Cartonera – finished projects on display in the Language Learning Center

References

• Ackermann, E. (1996). Perspective-taking and object construction: Two keys to learning. In Y. B. Kafai & M. Resnick (Eds.), Constructionism in practice: Designing, thinking, and learning in a digital world (pp. 25–35). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Ackermann, E. (2004). Constructing knowledge and transforming the world. In M. Tokoro & L. Steels (Eds.), A learning zone of one’s own: sharing representations and flow in collaborative learning environments (pp. 17–35). Amsterdam: IOS Press.
• Papert, S. (1991). Situating constructionism. In I. Harel & S. Papert (Eds.), Constructionism: Research reports and essays, 1985-1990 (pp. 1–12). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing.