Squeak ideas for a classroom/clubhouse

[Jahanzeb Sherwani]

At 07:07 AM 1/13/2003 -0800, Alan Kay wrote:
>What we try to do is inspired by Montessori: to come up with projects 
>that the kids absolutely treat as toys and play, that also have (we 
>...

I think this is a really powerful idea, one that we haven't managed to
truly tap into in our first week because of the structure we chose for the
sessions. In fact, I think it might even be worthwhile for us to look into
what Montessori said, or how it's practiced today, because I think what
we're donig is (unintentionally) much closer to the traditional School
methods of teaching (instructionist) rather than a constructi(on/v)ist way
of letting them do whatever it is they want to do.

I've put up a long ramble about my experiences in the first two sessions up
at http://203.128.1.227/research (it's a swiki! :), and it's pretty long
and non-concise because my advisor wanted to have a log so that when he
continues the project after I'm gone with other researchers, the learning
curve is reduced to some extent.

To sum it up, we started off with the tutorials in the first session, and
then went on to show them some basic scripts and give them (in retrospect,
perhaps too complicated) a challenge involving x, y, and heading values of
an object. Although a lot of kids went through with this, the main question
I kept asking myself was: if I was one of these kids, I wouldn't be as
interested in jumping through the hoops that these 'teachers' are giving
me; I'd want to make something that I want to make, and have these guys
help me along the way.

Thus, I'm still talking about Papert's Constructionism -- learning by
making -- because I really believe that that's the best way to learn, when
you involve yourself in a meaningful project, *especially* when learning a
programming environment/language. Anindita's point about having plenty of
examples ready is really pertinent. Having concise examples of how to use
different aspects of the (programming) environment is essential in learning
its building blocks, but to have complex examples of how these building
blocks can be put together to create something larger is also important in
inspiring larger designs. Of course, I have no idea what the broader
educational community thinks of the above assertions I've just made, and if
any of you could recommend some texts or websites which address these
pedagogical issues, I'd love to read them.

But what keeps getting to me is the fact that I'd planned to let the kids
be free to make whatever they wanted to make -- computer games, stories,
anything -- but what has ended up happening is that we're guiding the whole
class through almost like a lecture! I guess this is the critical
difference between a 'facilitator' and a 'teacher'. You want to let the
Montessori-esque 'playfield' be open to self-directed learning, but then
you also want to teach them certain things that you feel are important.
After having gone through this experience, rereading your mails makes much
more sense.

Kim, your suggestions to give a 'content area', as well as to use
challenges, are great. I think that by making them focus on a specific area
(or even with a challenge), you really enable them to get immersed into a
specific field, to really get to understand the basics of what's going on
-- something that "do what you want to, kids" doesn't realistically allow.
Also, by guiding the direction but not forcing the choice of project,
there's a lot of flexibility for the kids doing what they want to do.
Further, as John pointed out, asking questions and making criteria for
success is good as it lets the kids do what they want to do, but answer the
things that you think they should learn or at least think about, so both
aims are met. Also, it helps us in gathering quantitative data!

>This led them to write similar scripts to accellerate a painted 
>object to match the movie. (We have a nice video clip of this 
>process.)

This is extremely interesting. It reminds me of a paper I read by Gary
Stager, where he talks about students who were given the task of making a
LEGO Mindstorms car that could climb as steep an incline as possible. One
of the students found the best match of wheel-material/ramp-material pairs
that led to the hardest angle and then examined printouts of microscope
magnifications of both materials -- she found out that the wheels had
microscopic 'spikes' which fit into almost perfectly matching microscopic
'grooves' in the ramp. Technology really does enable students to observe
natural phenomena more closely.

How was your velocity/acceleration/gravity/movie-clip session structured? I
think this is a crucial aspect in replicating such findings. If possible,
I'll try to work on a similar project if my advisor agrees. However, I'd
like to know how these concepts were introduced to them, when and how the
idea of videotaping an actual falling object was given to them (or whether
they thought of it themselves), and how they reacted to it. Please let me
know if there's any written material on this at all.

>Once they had a script that would move objects as gravity moves them, 
>they had a new tool and toy to make gravity games, etc.

Maybe this is a good tool to get kids to learn: ask them to make whatever
they want to make; if a few want to learn how to (suppose) simulate gravity
for a game, teach them the fundamentals of gravity through methods like
you've mentioned above... this would 'arm' them with the tools they need to
adequately address the gravity issue they faced earlier, and gives them a
context and desire to learn about the principle of gravity in the first
place, to a greater extent than perhaps their natural curiosity would.

>>2) How does one introduce the medium as something that is infinitelly
>>malleable, and that it is ok to add/change something if you don't like it?
>
>Most children have a big revelation about this in their first few 
>hours of doing stuff. We've noticed it happening many times when they 
>put a new costume to their car object and realize that they can make 
>anything and make it do anything.

Ours haven't yet, and I think it's mostly due to the fact that we haven't
been doing a good job of enabling them to see Squeak as a platform to 'make
anything and make it do anything'. We need to be more facilitator-like and
less teacher-like. Any advice would also be appreciated! I think we need to
really apply most of the ideas many of you gave in your responses to my
initial question.

>Teach the older ones a few days before the younger ones. You can 
>start with the same set of projects, but the older children can go 
>quite a bit further and faster. So it's a good idea to have more 
>project ideas for them.

Actually this is interesting too.. we started off with a wide range of
ages, and didn't want to make the younger ones think it was too hard, and
thus we painstakingly made the first session as easy as possible.
Unfortunately, this had the opposite effect on the eldest student, who left
because he felt it was too easy, and child's play for him. After the
session I spent some time going over the more advanced features of what he
could do with Squeak, and that did pique his interest, and although he said
he would continue attending, he didn't show up for the next class.

More project ideas for them is a great idea and we've now realized that we
need to keep diversity in the projects and in their difficulty levels, to
allow different kids to find their 'niche' and also to give us some good
quantifiable data regarding who chose what project and why.

>The simple bottom line here is that young children especially are 
>interested in things they can *do*. So you will have no problems. 
>Freire was talking much more about trying to educate adults who had 
>grown up in traditional cultures (and here, I think, he was most 
>right).

I agree with you completely, and I apologize for misrepresenting Freire
(Anindita also mentioned something along these lines). However, what I
meant was that most kids in schools in Pakistan (even those that are
following British curricula of the O'Levels and A'Level exams) don't get
exposed to true Science ever in school. You're taken through the motions,
and you cover the facts/formulae/etc to get good grades, but you never feel
a sense of connection to what you do. A hands-on project -- like the one
you mentioned about videotaping gravity in action, and then simulating it
yourself -- is exactly the kind that I think would spur interest and
enthusiasm, and bring about learning both the concept of gravity, and
perhaps more importantly, the Scientific method of how one arrives at such
ideas.

>>  Does anyone have any experience in addressing these
>>concerns best through the use of environments such as Squeak?
>
>I think Mitchel Resnick of the Media Lab has had more experience than 
>we have, with his various LOGO in schools projects in Latin America, 
>and his more recent computer clubhouses around the world.

Yes, I've applied for grad studies at the Media Lab (the three Epistemology
& Learning groups) and spoke to Mitchel Resnick. They've done some great
work in this department, and I really hope to continue my research and
study there (if I get accepted!). Anindita, I believe the Future Of
Learning group has done most of the
LOGO-in-constructionist-environments-across-the-world type stuff, am I
right? Would you know the best place for me to get descriptions of actual
experiences over there, if there are any? I've read Arnan Sipitakiat's
thesis as well as David Cavallo's, and they did mention many interesting
points.

--

It's gotten to be quite a long reponse... just one last point. One thing
that I got from watching the kids, and going over much of the literature on
such environments is that kids are natural computer users in a sense --
maybe its to do with their 'language instinct'. What would happen if you
had a bunch of kids with Squeak (or any other such no floor/ceiling
environment) and you let them create, collaborate, learn, in whatever way
they wanted, and encouraged them to teach each other as much along the way
-- all with minimal outside interaction with elders or teachers. If
self-directed, self-sustaining, effective learning is possible in such a
paradigm, it might mean a lot for places where skilled teachers are scarce,
but computers and logistics are not. This is something I'm interested in
pursuing further during the current project in a limited sort of way; has
anyone heard of work done in a similar vein?

Sorry for the long mail... I'll try to keep subsequent ones shorter!

Jahanzeb