"In the 1960s, Seymour Papert and colleagues initiated a research project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), dedicated

to the study of how children think and learn, and to the development of novel educational approaches and technological tools to help children learn things in new ways "During the three decades since, that research effort has evolved and grown. One of its technological offspring, the programming language Logo, has been used by tens of millions of schoolchildren all over the world. At the same time, its theoretical foundation, which has become known as constructionism, has deeply influenced how educators and researchers think about directions for educational reform and, within that context, about the roles for technology in learning." (from Kafai, Y. B., & Resnick, M. (1996). Introduction. In Kafai, Y. B., & Resnick, M. (Eds.), Constructionism in practice: designing, thinking, and learning in a digital world. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Good background info on constructionism.

Mindstorms: "The next chapter discusses how this idea can be developed by constructing many such 'microworlds,' each with its own set of assumptions and constraints. Children get to know what it is like to explore the properties of a chosen microworld undisturbed by extraneous questions. In doing so they learn to transfer habits of exploration from their personal lives to the formal domain of scientific theory construction" (p. 117). "The design of the microworld makes it a 'growing place' for a specific species of powerful ideas or intellectual structures. So, we design microworlds that exemplify not only the 'correct' Newtonian ideas, but many others as well: the historically and psychologically important Aristotelian ones, the more complex Einsteinian ones, and even a 'generalized law-of-motion world' that acts as a framework for an infinite variety of laws of motion that individuals can invent for themselves" (p. 125). "A first block is that children do not know anything else like these laws. Before being receptive to Newton's laws of motion, they should know some other laws of motion. There must be a first example of laws of motion, but it certainly does not have to be as complex, subtle, and counterintuitive as Newton's laws. More sensible is to let the learner acquire the concept of laws of motion by working with a very simple and accessible instance of a law of motion. This will be the first design criterion for our microworld. The second block is that the laws, as stated, offer no footholds for learners who want to manipulate them. There is no use they can put them to outside of end-of-chapter schoolbook exercises. And so, a second design criterion for our microworlds is the possibility of activities, games, art, and so on, that make activity in the microworlds matter" (p. 126).

"Children do not follow a learning path that goes from one 'true position' to another, more advanced "true position." Their natural learning paths include "false theories" that teach as much about theory building as true ones. But in school false theories are no longer tolerated. "Our educational system rejects the 'false theories' of children, thereby rejecting the way children really learn" (p. 132). "So, rather than stifling the children's creativity, the solution is to create an intellectual environment less dominated than the school's by the criteria of true and false" (p. 133). ** "As in a good art class, the child is learning technical knowledge as a means to get to a creative and personally defined end. There will be a product" (p. 134).

"In the wake of the advent of inexpensive microcomputers in the late 1970s came the first wave of nonprofessional programmers. Children, older students, teachers, and computer hobbyists took to the keyboard to find an experience that nobody had been able to have in previous generations." (from Kafai, Y. B. (1995.) Minds in play: computer game design as a context for children's learning. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates) Good opening to discussion on constructionism, explain how this is the origin point for UGC practices.

"The first instinct of educators is to couple the new technology to their old methods of instruction. My vision is of something much grander. So I dream of using this powerful new technology not to 'improve' the schools we have always known (and, to be honest, hated) but to replace them with something betterI think it will be more like the growth of a new culture, a 'computer culture' in which the presence of computers will have been so integrated into new ways to think about ourselves and about the subject matters we learn that the nature of learning itself will be transformed.". (from Papert, S. (1980). New cultures from new technologies. Byte, 5, 230-240.) "Constructionism the N word as opposed to the V word shares constructivism's connotation of learning as ''building knowledge structures" irrespective of the circumstances of the learning. It then adds the idea that this happens especially felicitously in a context where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a pub1ic entity, whether it's a sand castle on the beach or a theory of the universe." "Now one can make two kinds of scientific claim for constructionism. The weak claim is that it suits some people better than other modes of learning currently being used. The strong claim is that it is better for everyone than the prevalent ''instructionist" modes practiced in schools. A

variant of the strong claim is that this is the only framework that has been proposed that allows the full range of intellectual styles and preferences to each find a point of equilibrium." (from Constructionism, Harel, Idit (Ed); Papert, Seymour (Ed), Westport, CT, US: Ablex Publishing, 1991) Note that the creations need not be physical objects. They can just be concepts and ideas such as a "theory of the universe." Despite this being a "new" way to educate and learn, constructionism is still resultsoriented (i.e. Papert wants to cite "scientific" proof of its validity).

"Building on the computer (or with the computer) a piece of instructional software about fractions is discussed here as a privileged way for children to engage with fractions by constructing something personal." "In [Project] Headlight there is virtually no use of 'ready to use software' and little emphasis on learning about computers and learning programming as ends in themselves. The students learn programming but programming is a means to different ends, which we conceptualize as entering a new learning culturedeveloping new ways of learning and thinking." ** "Our vision focuses on using technology to support excellence in teaching, in learning, and in thinking with computers technology as a medium for expression." "To summarize, the childrens daily activities resulted in 17 different pieces of instructional software about fractionsone product for each child in the experiment and 17 personal portfolios consisting of the plans and designs they wrote down for each day's work, and the pieces of Logo code they had programmed, as well as their written reflections at the end of each session on the problems and changes they had dealt with that day." (from Harel, Idit; Papert, Seymour, (1990), "Software Design as a Learning Environment," Interactive Learning Environments, 1(1), 1-32.) Software is the "public entity" being designed here. Emphasis on personalization of creations. Project Headlight was developed for an inner-city school in Boston. Emphasis on finding "new ways of learning and thinking," not computer literacy. Triumphalist tone to work.