You can find the preface to Mindstorms at:
http://www.papert.org/articles/GearsOfMyChildhood.html
Mitch Resnick's group is now called "lifelong kindergarden" http://llk.media.mit.edu/ A good starting point is "Beyond black boxes": http://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/archive/proposal.html http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/resnick97beyond.html
We use ToonTalk in our project. Its "childish" appearance is deceiving. IMHO, it can be a very powerful tool for teaching CS:
http://www.toontalk.com/
You might also want to explore Squeak and Boxer http://www.squeak.org/ http://dewey.soe.berkeley.edu/boxer.html/index.html
best,
- Yishay
Matt wrote:
| As for CS, I'm not aware of any work in this direction. However, I would
There's a healthy, and even large, amount of work in this direction. The work with the longest thread is probably that carried out by Seymour Papert and his research group (now the Learning and Epistemology group in the MIT Media Labs). LOGO, the Turtle, MIT's 6.270 J-term course, and the LEGO Mindstorm are some of the outcomes of that work.[1,2,3,4] Related (directly) is some of Mitch Resnick's work with massively parallel microworlds--StarLogo, for example.[5,6] Also, I'd recommend Papert and Turkle's "Epistemological Pluralism and the Revaluation of the Concrete". Good thinking material.[6 1/2]
A Google search on "constructivism computer science" and "constructivism programming" turn up a number of links; I'll summarize a few here, and provide any comments when possible/appropriate.[7 -> ...]
If you want to dig more deeply into constructivism, filtering the material is difficult at best. Certainly,
http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/constructivism.html
could serve as a good starting point. David Jonassen's work is well regarded in this area, Maria Montessouri (for a historical perspective), Vygotsky (likewise, but very applicable)... all of these will require the reader to make the connections to computing, but then again... that's a rather constructivist idea, isn't it? :)
Hope that helps, Matt
[1] Mindstorms, by Seymour Papert. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465046746/103-0475635-0989453?v=glance
[2] ... endless material is available re: LOGO, the turtle, and constructivism. I can only suggest starting with Google searches like "LOGO constructivism" and following your own nose.
[3] 6.270 is an instance of construcitvist principles of education instantiated in a college-level course. http://web.mit.edu/6.270/
[4] All things re: nifty stuff you can do with a LEGO mindstorm: http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics/
and (obligatory? unnecessary?) self-citation, the nifty things I've done with the LEGO Mindstorm: http://www.jadud.com/people/mcj/links/Writing/PeerReviewed/index.html
[5] Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams, an excellent text on constructivism and massively parallel microworlds. http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=5368
[6] http://education.mit.edu/starlogo/, website and downloads
[6 1/2] http://www.papert.org/articles/EpistemologicalPluralism.html
[7 ->] Constructivism in Computer Science Education: Evaluating a Teleteaching Environment for Project Oriented Learning http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/henze98constructivism.html
Constructivism in Computer Science Education http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/474523.html While reasonably well cited, I feel the paper is a minimal rehashing of educational literature on the topic of constructivism. That said, it makes the jumps that some may be unwilling to make.
A Comparison of Constructivist VS Behaviourist Assignment Sets for CS102 http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~becker/Main/Papers/233asg-paper1.fm.pdf
Describing Computer Science Education Research: An Academic Process View http://user.it.uu.se/~andersb/publications/The_model.pdf This paper may be more research-oriented, but you may find some things of use or interest in the bibliography.
http://xenia.media.mit.edu/~mt/ Michael Travers's thesis on agent-based programming and environments for it may be too thick a read, but given his supervisors, I think you'll find his biblographic work and overarching themes to be appropriate.
________________________________________________________________________ Matt Jadud http://www.cs-ed.org/blogs/mjadud/ Canterbury Weather: High 41 F / 5 C, Low 32 F / 0 C, Sunny intervals
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