[IAEP] Concise explanation of Constructionism from the Learning Team

[Seth Woodworth]

Inspired by Sameer's recent conversations with a pair of Montessori
Kindergarden teachers.  I went to talk to Cynthia Solomon of the OLPC
Learning team.  We got to talking about the theory of Activities and a few
other topics.  Eventually she showed me this snippit from the Media Lab's
Future of Learning Group:
Constructionism

We are developing "Constructionism" as a theory of learning and education.
Constructionism is based on two different senses of "construction." It is
grounded in the idea that people learn by actively constructing new
knowledge, rather than having information "poured" into their heads.
Moreover, constructionism asserts that people learn with particular
effectiveness when they are engaged in constructing personally meaningful
artifacts (such as computer programs, animations, or robots).

http://learning.media.mit.edu/projects.html


I thought that this explination was concise and really interesting.  I would
love to explain this to people who want to desige activities, just to give
them a little snapshot of the concept.  Does anyone have a problem with this
deffinition? Does anyone have an improvement?


-Seth
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