What is Constructionism + The Maker Movement?
"A constructionist environment is one where learners have sufficient time and opportunity to share their ideas with a wider community." (Morado et al., 2021)
Promoting constructionism and maker movement environments at school is an important way to foster creativity in students, as it allows them to take control of their own creations and use their own ideas to formulate projects.
An example of a technology that allows students to construct their own projects is Micro:bit (Micro:Bit Educational Foundation, n.d.). Micro:bit is an emerging technology that is beneficial for students in primary school to engage with in order to practice their coding skills, hence allowing them to practice being creative with coding.
Discussion of Micro:bit Technology
One of the benefits to using Micro:bit in the classroom is that you only need a few items for it to work. For example, you only need the micro:bit itself, a USB adaptor, and a computer, hence making it a more accessible technology.
Micro:bit also has many tutorial videos that are accessible on their website, allowing students and teachers to learn visually how to create coding that they can upload to their micro:bit. These tutorials range in difficulty levels, allowing students at all levels to be creative to their own difficulty level.
Example of Tutorials included on Micro:bit
Figure 1: Micro:bit at home: heart show.
Figure 2: Micro:bit at home: heart code.
Micro:bit would be a useful technology for students to use in art classes or design and technology classes as well. For example, students in an art class could use the MakeCode platform on micro:bit in order to program their micro:bit to show different shapes, such as a sun, a heart, or a star. This allows students to be creative in what they are allowed to create, while learning the skills of coding.
On the Micro:bit website, students can also access a platform called Scratch. This platform is useful in making coding available to students who are unable to access a physical micro:bit, as they can still make a drag and drop coding sequence online. This promotes creativity in students as there are many Scratch coding resources that they can select, hence promoting their own creative thought.
Figure 3: Example of my own creation using Scratch on Micro:bit.
Critiques
Overall, Micro:bit is an extremely useful technology and could be tailored to use in many different schooling subjects based due to the range of opportunities it provides to students.
Although Micro:bit and its website is very accessible to most students and teachers, some students may struggle to grasp an understanding of using a micro:bit at the start of their learning if they have never seen one before. This is why it is important that teachers familiarise themselves with this technology before introducing it to their students, in order to ensure they can answer their questions.
It may also become expensive to order micro:bits for an entire school or class. However, Micro:bit helps to fix this issue by providing other online platforms such as Scratch that allows students to code online and not directly to the micro:bit.
References
Micro:bit Educational Foundation. (2020a, April 23). micro:bit at home: heart code [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykpdk_qkShk
Micro:bit Educational Foundation. (2020, April 23). micro:bit at home: heart show [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAhn7lPI6mU
Micro:bit Educational Foundation. (n.d.). Micro:Bit. https://microbit.org/
Morado, M. F., Melo, A. E., & Jarman, A. (2021). Learning by making: A framework to revisit practices in a constructionist learning environment. British Journal of Educational Technology, 52(3), 1093–1115. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13083
Hi Isabella!
You did a really good job on explaining constructionism and the maker movement and its link to the classroom. I gained a great insight into the benefits of using a technology such as the micro:bit in a classroom for students learning. Although, I think it would have been really interesting to see a practical example of how you used the micro:bit in the tutorial and how what we coded with our irrigation systems can be linked to a KAL for your future lesson plans. Alongside this, an explanation of different pedagogies you could utilise as a future teacher in conjunction with this technology would have been very insightful. However, overall you explored the limitations of this technology really…
Hi Isabella, thank you for your post, it was really informative to read and gain insight from a primary teacher's perspective. The example videos are useful tools but would have been great to see a screencast of your own code that you did to make your name creation as I am unsure how that uses the micro bit or if is it just using scratch coding. You have made a good point about using this in art class to make a different image show up but it would be great to see other uses in other subject areas besides just art class. Overall, good blog post, I gained valuable insights about the benefits and limitations of the Micro:bit.
Kind regards,