We made this stop on the way to the Maritime Provinces. The workshop was in New Hampshire. It was convenient that it could be on the way to our trip to the Maritime Provinces.
I started this workshop with little idea of what we would do or what I would learn. I was attracted to it by the fact that it was “constructivism,” the names of the people involved, and by the software that was mentioned in the announcement.
Gary spoke on Monday about big ideas that would be investigated during the workshop. Some of those he mentioned were the value of tinkering (bricolage), the use of the computer as authentic material rather than a prop, technology allowing a greater range of projects to allow learning through experience, the need of teachers for learning experiences, and justifying the use of technology. He mentioned that good educational ideas are hard to find, but bad ideas are timeless. Among the advantages that he mentioned for technology based projects was that students learned about sticking to something, following a strand or the necessity of abondoning one strand to start another. He mentioned that educational computing is about software, not hardware.
Some of the learning activities mentioned were making video games, simulations of something such as the middle ages, building your own “Sketchpad,” and graphing sensor data. Constructivism describes the process of constructing knowledge inside the head of the learner.
Constructionism suggests that there is a project demonstrating the learning (Seymor Papert). Some of the ways to tell what students are learning is to use videos, blogs, etc. Some of the things that are needed for projects are a good prompt, appropriate materials, sufficient time, and a supportive culture. It is necessary to have expertise and some must be found if there’s not any. Expertise comes from elders, experts, and newbies; shared history, mythology, heroes, self-importance; common commitment ot progress; and practice. Entry into this community of practice (C.o.P.) is based on a willingness to mimic the behaviors of the masters.
On Tuesday, I learned a little about Scratch, which is somewhat like MicroWorlds, but free. I also saw the results of a program called Word Cloud--also free, and the use of a Pico Board (about $50) online. The Pico Board allows the operation of four sensors. I should be going to the costrucivistconsortium.org webpage to read the papers and see what is available.
There are certain elements that are needed in a project: purpose, time, something personally meaningful to the creator, complexity (including serendifpity), something shareable, and access to construction materials. Some questions worth asking about a project are: is the problem small enough to be solveable? Is the project monumental (100’s of problems) or substantial (meaningful, challenging)? Who does the project satisfy? What can students do with the knowledge? Projects should also consider an artist’s aesthetics and might be beautiful, thoughtful, personally menaingful, shareable with respect for the audience, sophisticated, moving for the audience, and enduring. Some ways to use models are to teach a specific concept, as a thematic project such as a visit to a museum, and as a cross curricula theme as in how to save animals in Africa.
Alfie Kohn spoke to us about teaching and learning. He seemed to say that authentic learning required no learning of an essential body of knowledge. As I understood it, he thought that learning was not really something that could be taught, but that students had to construct all of their own learning. Even rubrics are imposing some form of outside standards on the learning that might occur. One of his points that was brought out later at the reflections session was that we should be doing something with learners rather than at them.
Lyndy Kahn showed us some of the software from Tech4Learning including Twist, which does vector art; Pixar, which does regular drawing; Frames, which puts still images together; Image Blender, which lets the user superimpose images and make layers; and WebBlender, which builds presentations which can be put on a web site.
On Wednesday morning, Bob Tinker from Concord Consortium spoke to us. He started with Molecular Workshop, but showed us open source software that has been created by their software designer, but has been added to and edited for many different activities by others. He believes that we should be looking at strong open source tools for science (and I assume other disciplines) that can have activities written for them and contributed by the network of users. He thinks that most commercial software is a failure. He wants to see people build open source materials that can be put into their format so that they are more useable by teachers. He mentioned probes that are made by the teachers according to directions on the Concord website and connect to the USB port through a Vernier connections.k12 openmind.org --open source from Indianapolis--from one of the participants
Gary worked with MicroWorlds EX. He mentioned that he thought that software should be something that allowed students to grow. Also, he thought that one of the reasons that Logo disappeared was because the teachers had trouble learning how to follow a strand and found it hard as well as the fact that commercialism produced programs with more bells and whistles. LCSI has continued to exist in part because of sales outside the continental US.
I spent an hour or so working with the PicoCricket software to make the clown do some movements and make sounds.
Wednesday evening I went with the group to hear Marvin Minsky. He used the terms vertical and horizontal activities and had little use for the horizontal ones. He mentioned the death of American society attributing it mostly to the decrease in funding for and interest in science research.
In the MIT Media Lab we saw a machine that made pieces that had been designed by the computer. Gary showed a video on Thursday morning that indicated that there will be more machines built that will make computer designs into concrete objects.
I spent most of the day trying the claymation, which I had wanted to try it seems like forever and just not done. I made a model of my dog. First I tried making it purely of clay, and then Ginny came by and showed me how to make a framework for it out of pipecleaners with aluminum foil for thickness so I remade the figure. It turned out reasonably for a non-artist. I then took pictures of the figure in different positions and went to Frames to put the images together into a video. I didn’t really have time to make a finished product, but I could certainly see how it was done. I made backgrounds from some images I had of our front yard, and then had “Frodo” walk across the yard and finally lie down for a nap.