[IAEP] [Grassroots-l] OLPC in Kindergarten

[Maria Droujkova]

Thank you so much for compiling this list. It's most instructive. The
topic made me think about language development and its deep
connections with cognitive development. A kid adopted at the age of
8-10 can forget his native language, but brain activity in languages
learned after the age of seven or so is distinguishable on MRI scans
from brain activity in native languages. There are also measurable
differences in behavior. Those of you who know several languages
fluently can easily experiment with mental arithmetic tasks, such as
multiplying two-digit numbers. Even if you fluently think, read, write
and talk in a non-native language, your arithmetic in it will be
slower and much more prone to mistakes.

So, I think we have to work with kids under six if we want our
proposed culture changes to become native to the next generation. The
attention of too many researchers and developers to older kids
exclusively, described in the articles below, is most unfortunate in
that respect. Even though each individual piece of research and
development is valuable, the trend of avoiding young kids makes
culture change efforts sluggish.

This trend parallels what happens in mathematics education with
regards to Early Algebra. A few years ago, I worked on a prototype for
an algebraic reasoning software suite that had qualitative parts
accessible for preliterate kids, such as combinatorial grids vs.
number operation grids, or picture transformation function machines
vs. numeric function machines. The most frequently asked question
about it was, "But where is algebra?"

The amount of reverse engineering of each domain required to make it
accessible to young children is prohibitive for a lot of practitioners
and researchers. For example, grid tasks involve complex growth of
understanding about co-variation, typically starting from noticing
local grid patterns among neighbor cells, progressing to row and
column ideas, branching into "jigsaw" tasks about taking grids apart
and putting them together, and finally arriving at coordinating row
and column variation and formalizing grid operation globally. Each
step of the way, there are learning tasks supporting particular pieces
of reasoning. Design of the tasks is informed by "grown-up" grid
concepts - that's why it feels like reverse engineering - but it's
based on what works with 3-6 yo.

I suggest always enlisting parents, especially attachment parenting
mothers of young kids, in the role of consultants. Pretty often, upon
looking at research or design write-up, mothers raise their eyebrows
and say: "Have these people even been around young kids? Here is what
I would do..."

-- 
Cheers,
MariaD

Make math your own, to make your own math.

http://www.naturalmath.com social math site
http://groups.google.com/group/naturalmath future math culture email group
http://www.phenixsolutions.com empowering our innovations


On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 8:42 AM, <forster at ozonline.com.au> wrote:
>
>> Radia Perlman in the 70s when at student at MIT did extensive experiments with preliterate children and the LOGO turtle and built a number of interfaces for them. She also spent some time at Xerox PARC where we duplicated her interfaces and did many similar experiments with chldren 3 years on up.
>
> thanks, found :
> http://www.formatex.org/micte2006/virtual/pdf/582.pdf
> see fig 3 with plastic cards showing visual images of turtle commands
>
> http://www.formatex.org/micte2006/virtual/ppt/582.ppt
> similar image
>
> http://logothings.wikispaces.com/
> towards the end, photo of Radia Perlman's Button Box for Pre-Schoolers
>
> http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~mcnerney/personal-ubicomp.pdf
> more discussion than the above
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