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I have been struggling this week for how to write a blog of some worth to Masters and Ph.D. students. As a rule, I tend to get more than I give in interactions with classmates, and am much more capable of leeching your good ideas than I am at creating my own. Additionally, I didn’t think this week’s readings were that inspiring. As a guy who has spent his fair share of time playing in the dirt, I enjoyed reading about the slime mold, and was challenged by the use of singular/plural pronouns, but that’s pretty much it.

Perhaps surprisingly, I find much of the reading to be intuitive. Should it be surprising that many children are able to think and make connections at the agent level, but struggle to identify patterns and accurately predict outcomes at the system level? In the turtle example, (Kafai, 2006) it is easy to understand how to get one turtle to draw a circle, because the child himself can think through what it would take for him to walk in a circle. Only basic knowledge of what it means to be “a circle” (a 360-degree shape) and control commands for the turtle are required. Understanding how to get a collection of turtles to form themselves into a circle is much more challenging, and it follows that creating the rules for their interactions might be more than the children would be able to do. As someone who was considered a “gifted” student, I acknowledge that I probably have an inaccurate understanding of what a 10-year-old student should be expected to do.

I was very interested in a seemingly tangential quote from the end of the Kafai chapter, “children… often assume that teaching is about asking questions and learning is about giving answers.” This quote agrees with my own indoctrination of what “school” and by extension “learning.” As a non-education professional, and someone who hasn’t entered a K-12 classroom since graduating from a K-12 school, I tend to have a very rigid idea of what these things look like.  While I theoretically can agree that constructionism is probably better than the learning environment I grew up in, I struggle with designing examples unless I see them in the text. What’s more, every time I read about a challenge identified in a study, I catch myself seeing those challenges as proof that this flipped classroom must not work.  The children in the Kafai study, and Keith from Peabody College, might find that they learn more fully in constructionist environments, but building those environments is a bridge too far.

I think that we can use computers to create simple models for any concept involving interactions between objects, which is a fairly vague and open definition. Much like my previous classmates have stated, this includes Physics, Earth Science, Physical Geography. Programs could also be created to model basic concepts in Chemistry and Physiology, but I believe would be too complicated for the value they would provide.   

I look forward to your input!