Squeak ideas for a classroom/clubhouse

Anindita anindita at media.mit.edu
Fri Jan 24 13:38:31 PST 2003



Quick response:

> 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.

I think the big thing here is what makes a good challenge? It's a tough
question. Seymour just wrote a paper in which he talks about
"project-based mathematics." A lot of school math now claims to be
project-based. You learn a concept, then apply it in a project. The
inverse of that, however, is how math was developed. People made things,
built things, then formalized those experiences into the elegant
mathematics that we see today.

A challenge like the one Gary and others use often is ramp climbing with
Lego robots.  Make a car to climb the steepest ramp possible. It's a
straightforward challenge, but to solve it, a lot of physical issues come
up, like friction, center of gravity, torque, etc. The kids talk about how
a car is top-heavy and falls over and the facilitators introduce formal
language to describe and dissect the problem, like "center of gravity" for
"top-heavy." I think a project about "x, y and heading" falls under the
first category of taking a concept and applying it, whereas "program a car
that finds its way through a maze" may use similar concepts, but is
something the children can easily see as something they can personalize
and do their own way. The "x, y, heading" challenge is also abstract. Kids
spend a lot of time trying to guess what the teacher wants. In a more
specific challenge, like make a car to climb a ramp or make a maze game,
there's less expectation for coming up with the right idea. The goal is
specific, the means is completely personal.

> 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.

Look at the publications online:

http://learning.media.mit.edu/publications.html
http://www.papert.org/works.html

There are a couple of theses on there which have the most in-depth
information of projects, like the projects in Thailand (David Cavallo and
Roger Sipitakiat). Paulo Blikstein wrote about work in Brazil. I wrote
about a project in Boston. We as a group are in the process of writing up
and putting together information about all of the projects (documentation
is our big theme right now). We have days of video to log and edit and
thousands of photographs to sort and explain. A long, but constructive
process. It's kind of like trying to document Squeak *grin* An
ever-evolving process. Oh, but I highly recommend Edith Ackermann's essay
on Piaget's Constructivism vs. Papert's Constructionism. She worked with
both Piaget and Seymour and gives highly nuanced descriptions of their
theories and how they are different.

> 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?

Seymour's fond of saying that school is the only place where people are
segregated by age. If you kept 6 month olds with only other 6 month olds,
no one would ever learn to walk or talk. It's important to have people of
different experience levels and types to share those experiences. Kids
might be able to work in an environment like that, but they need access to
experts. I'm sure kids who work with Alan Kay and Kim Rose and other
members of the Squeak team make huge leaps because they have facilitators
to encourage them but also to push them deeper and introduce them to all
sorts of possibilities. While many of the teachers may not have
programming expertise, they do have other experiences and knowledge that
can be used. Also, in every country where we've worked, people have always
said "Our teachers aren't skilled enough, our teachers can't do that." But
when given the chance to learn in a constructive manner, teachers who had
never touched a computer before made huge leaps and created compelling
projects (that wowed the same people who said "our teachers can't") on
their own.

Not such a quick response as I'd expected. Getting off the soap box
now. . .

:)

Anindita




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