Bergin, Constructionism in the Classroom

     In "Chapter 3 The Cambridge Handbook of The Learning Sciences" Kafai clearly reviews Papert's theory of Constructionism and clarifies how it differs from Piaget's constructivism. Kafai makes the distinction that constructionism "focuses on the connected nature of knowledge with its personal and social dimensions." as opposed to Piaget who focuses on individual centered development. This becomes important to us as educators and program designers, because it immediately makes a case for computers as an optimal tool for this new type of learning. The style which strays away from the typical acquisition metaphor in which students system gain more knowledge from direct instruction rather than participating in a more authentic way.   

    This is where we begin make the link between Papert's theories and application through, Wilensky and Resnick's proposed modeling method. In the article they discuss how students were able to use the computers as a tool to replicate real life situations, these replicas allowed the students, and even adult researchers to gain different perspective on these scenario, and even promoted productive cognitive dissonance. For example, when students viewed the traffic jam moving backward, it prompted a discussion on the advanced concepts of levels. Additionally, when another student named Benjamin enacted andsimple-minded' ecosystem scenario, with few variables and yet he was able to visualize and, draw new inferences and conclusions about the complex interaction such as predator vs prey relationships.  The key factor in these two programming models is not just that students were able to create a visual aid to solve a single problem they were struggling with but in these and the many other listed examples, the computers promoted metacognition. 

     As Papert had hoped, as we sift through the many example of computer programs designed and/or used by children and adults we see evidence of a shift in thinking. Kafai points out "children learn to articulate procedures, recognize repetition, and 'debug' their own thinking when programs don't run as expected" In the case of Benjamin's ecosystem he was natural using the scientific method without direct instruction, he made an observation, developed a question, formed a hypothesis, ran an experiment, drew a conclusions, and repeated different scenarios to see how the results would be affected without specific prompting from the teacher. The program allowed him to have an authentic learning experience and truly embodied Papert's theory of computers as "objects to with" as opposed to our typical definition as tools or supports.  

The goal is to create similar circumstances for out students at USN:

I think science and math provides the biggest list of topics to work to create

physics models: (laws of motion, force, velocity)

fraction models 

-ecosystem simulation

water cycle

roller coaster simulation

immune system simulation