Technologies for Creative Learning

Let's do a bit more reflective work with the childhood object writing.

Write a 3-7 page paper about an object from your childhood, in the spirit of Papert's gears. Please post your essay on the blog AND email a .doc version of your essay to mas714-staff at media.mit.edu. (If you'd rather not share your essay publicly, you can just email it to mas714-staff at media.mit.edu)

In groups of 2 or 3, use a PicoCricket kit to construct an interactive artifact.

Information about getting started is available on the PicoCrickets support page: http://www.picocricket.com/support.html

If you have any problems with your kit, please send me an email at kbrennan@mit.edu

In class, we'll be sharing our PicoCricket creations and our experiences with the activity. Some questions to think about:

* How was working with PicoCrickets different from your experience of working with Scratch?
* How did working with others change your experience?

Seymour Papert wrote Mindstorms more than 30 years ago (in 1980), so it is not surprising that parts of the book seem out-dated and irrelevant today (e.g., the Logo vs. Basic debate). Other parts of the book, once viewed as radical, now seem mainstream – such as Papert’s contention that all children will and should have easy access to computers in school and in their everyday lives.

But many of Papert’s ideas remain relevant and valuable today. For your blog post, select one excerpt from Mindstorms and explain why you found the ideas in the excerpt particularly interesting or provocative.

Write about an object from your childhood, in the spirit of Papert’s gears. (If you'd rather not share your essay publicly, you can email it to mas714-staff at media.mit.edu)

Please post or email your essay by 5pm on Monday.

How do the readings help you to think about objects in a different way? Do you find some ideas more useful than others?

Please post your response by 5pm on Sunday. It's fine to keep the posts short (just a couple of paragraphs). What's most important is communicating your ideas clearly.

For this week's activity, you were asked to create a Scratch project to introduce yourself, and to add the project to the class gallery on the Scratch website by end of day Monday (Sept 19).

Some resources that might be helpful:

• Getting Started Guide
• Scratch Cards
• Video Tutorials
• Reference Guide

To add your project to the gallery:

• Create an account on the Scratch website.
• From the Share menu in the Scratch application, select the Share this project online menu item.
• Once your project is online, visit the class gallery and click Add my project.

In class, we'll be discussing our experiences with this activity. Some questions to think about:

• As you created the project, what was most surprising? What was most difficult?
• Reflect on the process of creating your Scratch project, using the framework of the creative learning spiral (described in the Resnick paper).
• What resources did you use in learning Scratch and creating your project (tutorials, other people, etc.)?
• What do you think you learned from this experience?

In his article about the "kindergarten approach to learning," Resnick describes a spiral process involving imagining, creating, playing, sharing, reflecting, and imagining again.

Consider a creative project that you've worked on, and analyze the ways in which your process aligned with kindergarten learning spiral -- and the ways it didn't.

Please post your response by 5pm on Sunday. It's fine to keep the posts short (just a couple of paragraphs). What's most important is communicating your ideas clearly.

This course explores how new technologies can engage people in creative learning experiences – and transform the ways we think about learning. Students will experiment with new learning technologies, discuss educational ideas underlying the technologies, analyze design strategies for creating new technologies, and examine how and what people learn as they use these technologies.

Students interested in the course should come to the first session on Tuesday, September 13 from 9:00-12:00 in room 525 of the new Media Lab building.

We have a limit on the enrollment in the class. If too many people come to the first session, we will have a process for selecting students for the course. The application process is now closed. All applicants will be notified on the evening of Tuesday, September 13.

The following students will join MAS.714 this term:
Bridget Binstock
Chris Mosier
David Sengeh
Derek Ham
Eyal Shahar
Gaia Carini
Gracie Elqura
Hannah Krakauer
J. Nathan Matias
Jason Haas
Jennifer Jacobs
Micah Eckhardt
Misha Sra
Sofia Rebeca Berinstein
Stacy Rush
Stephen Bresnick
Tiffany Tseng
Vanessa Gennarelli
Zachary Kaiser

For more information about the course, please explore the course syllabus or send us questions via email.