Social Constructivism and Flipgrid | W4 Q1 | Forum

I believe that individuals should actively interact with their environment and with other people to construct their knowledge. Learning occurs when there is social interaction or individual effort to understand a concept. In other words, each person creates their own knowledge in a social context. Because of this, my learning theory is social constructivism, which is an expansion of Vygotsky’s theory of social learning (1978).

Social media or Web 2.0 provides a variety of technology-enhanced learning environments to students and teachers. For example, Flipgrid is a website enabling discussions between people with videos. A teacher can create a classroom on Flipgrip and post a question or content via text or video. In this way, students and teachers can experience a social environment similar to an in-person classroom atmosphere and interact with each other to develop their ideas. Each student can create content or remix them, one of the affordances of Web 2.0 (Greenhow et al., 2009) to express their opinions/answers. In fact, everyone in the class can comment on videos with text or video. Thus, knowledge construction among students can continue collaboratively. Interactivity, another affordance of Web 2.0 (Greenhow et al., 2009) is accomplished by user-friendly features of Flipgrid without a need for expertise and age limit (even preschool children can use it).

Flipgrid is just one example of video-sharing sites that enable the social construction of knowledge among people. I think it is a good alternative especially during these times for providing asynchronous discussion forums to students with creativity and flexibility.