The digital revolution necessitates, but also makes possible, radical changes in how and what we learn. Constructionism in Practice describes a set of innovative educational research projects at the MIT Media Laboratory, illustrating how new computational technologies can transform our conceptions of learning, education, and knowledge.
Constructionism in Practice grows out of 30 years of research on technologies for learning and thinking at MIT, and provides a rich and comprehensive description of constructionist educational theories. The book draws on real-world educational experiments conducted in formal and informal contexts: from inner-city schools and university labs to neighborhoods and after-school clubhouses. These experiments demonstrate how technology-based design activities can empower children from a wide range of backgrounds to become more confident and competent learners, and help them make deep connections with important mathematical and scientific ideas.
The book integrates ideas from the fields of learning, design, computer science, education, psychology, and epistemology, and presents a comprehensive theoretical framework for technologies in education. The book is divided into four interrelated sections: Perspectives in Constructionism, Learning through Design, Learning in Communities, and Learning about Systems.
Perspectives in Constructionism further develops the intellectual underpinnings of constructionist theory. This section looks closely at the role of perspective-taking in learning and discusses how both cognitive and affective processes play a central role in building connections between old and new knowledge.
Learning through Design analyzes the relationship between designing and learning, and discusses ways that design activities can provide personally meaningful contexts for learning. This section investigates how and why children can learn through processes of constructing artifacts such as games, textile patterns, robots, and interactive devices.
Learning in Communities focuses on the social aspects of constructionist learning, recognizing that how people learn is deeply influenced by the communities and cultures with which they interact. It examines the nature of learning in classroom, inner-city, and virtual communities.
Learning about Systems examins how students make sense of biological, technological, and mathematical systems. This section explores the conceptual and epistemological barriers to learning about feedback, self-organization, and probability, and it discusses new technological tools and activities that can help people develop new ways of thinking about these phenomena.