constructionist challenge

[Bill Kerr]

I can see different ways of approaching the problem of coming to grips with
constructionism:

a) try to define it in words -> this is tricky because if we learn by making
and doing (part of the definition but not sufficient) then is thinking and
writing words down a sufficiently insightful means of making and doing (it
might be part of the solution but some more strategic making might also be
required, eg. making using etoys in a partly guided project about exploring
falling objects is different from making by reading, thinking and writing -
not necessarily better but different)

I can see the argument that *defining* constructionism is not sufficient -
that making is different from defining

b) talk about projects and learning without using the actual C_ word (alan
kay, Yoshiki Ohshima)

c) acknowledge that C__ is useful but there are other useful ways of
learning as well (eg. spoonfeeding, some parts of training dogs)

I've been reading Marvin Minsky's *The Emotion Machine*. It's available on
line at his mit site.
http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/

He says that many words used in learning are suitcase words - that they are
not very useful because they have multiple meanings eg. he argues that
"consciousness" is a suitcase word (Ch 4)

I'm thinking that constructionism has become a suitcase word - nevertheless
I don't really believe that we can do without such words or at least talking
about the place of such words

I think all of the above approaches have value (a, b and c)

btw I can't see the word "constructionism" in the index of Minsky's book

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 2:01 AM, Bill Kerr <billkerr at gmail.com> wrote:

> Edward Cherlin's challenge:
>
> "I defy anybody to write down a definition of Constructionism or
> Constructivism that the others here will agree with"
>
>
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