I read the article called Constructivist - Constructionist at http://www.joanwink.com/newsletter/2002/news1002-construct.html
This article was very easy to read and made the connection between the two words very clear. The easiest way I can expaln it is from a quote of the author, "ConstrucTIVist is to Piaget, as construcTIONist is to Vygotsky. " Constructionisin is very social, and collaborative where constructivisim is very mental. You interact with the knowledge at your own level to your own understanding of it. That was the way I understood it.

I think both kinds of learning are important. For some things, you just need to construct your own knowledge. For example reading the article and understanding it would be constructivist for me, while learning how to chat with audio and video was a constructionist project where I needed to collaborate in order to learn. That is what I got out of the article.

Well today it made we well aware that online conferencing is not happening cross platform. Mac users have very nice chat features that cannot be used on any of the programs we tried today. First we tried Yahoo I could see video, had no sound and although Yahoo recognized my video, it didn't show it to anyone else.

Next we went to Learning times which lost their video component.

Then we went to Alada(I am sure the spelling is wrong) but Mac's couldn't access that either.

Finally Bee took us to somplace where I could verbal chat but still no video.

Vance says that we should try ivisit. So maybe we could do that next week.

Sigh......

What is Multiliteracy

I read the article Multiliteracy is the Challenge of Education by Valentina M. Singhirei of Moldova State University (www.iatp.md/multimedia/docs/multi_liter.doc)

Singhirei discusses different kinds of literacy. There is cognitive and socio-cultural skills, functional literacy, academic literacy, critical literacy and electronic literacy which includes understanding hypermedia and online collaboration.  Singhirei focuses on Internet Projects and their collaborative nature for problem solving, information sharing and communication activities that help learners learn authentic skills.

One question I have is what is the interactionist form of language learning. The author talks about interactionist learning and content based learning. I have never heard the term interactionist used before. I tend to think that using Internet projects is "constructivist". That means learners help to construct their own learning rather having that learning imposed upon them by a teacher. I am not sure what "interactionist means. Does anyone have any ideas?

So I guess the question is, What is multiliteracy? To me it means not just print literacy but media literacy, computer literacy, search skills literacy and the ability to interact collaboratively and effectively in an online environment

So the big questions is how does this affect learning and specifically second language learning? Post your ideas here!