The digital revolution necessitates,
but also makes possible, radical changes in how and what we learn.
This book describes a set of innovative educational research projects
at the MIT Media Laboratory, illustrating how new computational
technologies can transform our conceptions of learning, education,
and knowledge. The book draws on real-world education experiments
conducted in formal and informal contexts: from inner-city schools
and university labs to neighborhoods and after-school clubhouses.
The papers in this book are divided in four interrelated sections
as follows:
PERSPECTIVES IN CONSTRUCTIONISM further develops the intellectual
underpinnings of constructionist theory. This section looks closely
at the role of perspective-taking in learning and discusses how
both cognitive and affective processes play a central role in
building connections between old and new knowledge.
LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN analyzes the relationship between designing
and learning, and discusses ways that design activities can provide
personally meaningful contexts for learning. This section investigates
how and why children can learn through the processes of constructing
artifacts such as games, textile patterns, robots and interactive
devices.
LEARNING IN COMMUNITIES focuses on the social aspects of constructionist
learning, recognizing that how people learn is deeply influenced
by the communities and cultures with which they interact. It examines
the nature of learning in classroom communities, inner-city communities,
and virtual communities.
LEARNING ABOUT SYSTEMS examines how students make sense of biological,
technological, and mathematical systems. This section explores
the conceptual and epistemological barriers to learning about
feedback, self-organization, and probability, and it discusses
new technological tools and activities that can help people develop
new ways of thinking about these phenomena.
Contributors
Edith Ackermann
Aaron Brandes
Amy Bruckman
Michele Evard
Gregory Gargarian
Paula Hooper
Yasmin Kafai
Fred Martin
Seymour Papert
Mitchel Resnick
Randy Sargent
Brian Silverman
Alan Shaw
Uriel Wilensky