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Dede, C. (1995). The evolution of constructivist learning environments: Immersion in distributed, virtual worlds. Educational Technology, 35(5), 46-52. Excerpt from the article To date, uses of information technology to enhance constructivist learning environments have centered on creating computational tools and virtual representations that students can manipulate. For example, many of the articles in this Educational Technology issue describe information technology instantiations of Perkins' (1991) classification of constructivist paraphernalia: information banks, symbol pads, construction kits, phenomenaria, and task managers. As learners interpret experience to refine their mental models, computational tools that complement human memory and intelligence are made available. In parallel, transitional objects (such as Logo's "turtle") are used to facilitate translating personal experience into abstract symbols (Papert, 1988; Fosnot, 1992). Thus, technology-enhanced constructivist learning currently focuses on how representations and applications can mediate interactions among learners and natural or social phenomena. However, the high performance computing and communications capabilities driving the deployment of the National Information Infrastructure create a new possibility. Like Alice walking through the looking glass, learners can immerse themselves in distributed, synthetic environments, becoming "avatars" who vicariously collaborate and learn-by-doing using virtual artifacts to construct knowledge (Walker, 1990). Evolving beyond technology-mediated interactions between students and phenomena to technological instantiation of learners themselves and reality itself shifts the focus of constructivism: from peripherally enhancing how a student interprets a typical interaction with the external world to "magically" shaping the fundamental nature of how learners experience their physical and social context." Please download by clicking on the title of the article (above). You can then view the manuscript using the Adobe Acrobat Reader.
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