Squeak ideas for a classroom/clubhouse

Anindita anindita at media.mit.edu
Tue Jan 14 18:50:32 PST 2003



> supervisor. I can probably write a rather good "How NOT to conduct your
> first squeak session with children" paper right now! :) Having been through

*laugh* I felt the same way after my first day! Don't worry, you'll learn
from these experiences, adjust the next time, find a whole new set things
to worry about, etc. until you find your rhythm.

> However, without having a *need* to learn, and a context to learn within,
> it seemed to everyone that we were introducing nothing more than a
> glorified paint program, until the very end when we were able to get them
> to put in some basic functionality. That was just one of the mistakes we
> made in our research design.

This is a very true and very important point. Kim Rose talked about
challenges, and this is a great place to use them. I use warm-up exercises
(like in an art or writing class). What worked for me was to show some
examples or introduce a new technique, do a warm-up exercise, then let the
children do their thing. The exercises included things like have the kids
import a midi of a song that they like, modify the song until they're
happy with their version by changing instrumentation, tracks, etc. and
then make an animation to the song or some part of it. Or I asked the kids
to free write for a few minutes, pick a sentence that sounded interesting
and then to animate the sound of the sentence, not the meaning, using only
sound and image.

The exercises were optional. If a child was working on a project and
didn't want to participate, that was fine. They were a very different set
of starters than challenges, although both methods work and can get kids
engaged in their own projects quickly. Since our group was working around
expression, the exercises provided both constraint, a starting point and a
new frame for what and how things can be expressed.

> suggested we should actually write another paper on what we were thinking,
> and how things actually happened, so that others who embark on similar
> projects don't get into them again.

Definitely do this, at least for yourselves. I kept a journal during my
workshop experience and wrote up a lot of what I expected and what
happened as my thesis. Writing about it helped me work out a lot of
ideas about constructionism and creating a successful learning
environment, especially in an "art and tech" environment for children.


Anindita

________________
Visiting Scholar
Future of Learning
MIT Media Lab




More information about the Squeakland mailing list