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. <a href="http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/">http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/</a> 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 <div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 2:01 AM, Bill Kerr <<a href="mailto:billkerr@gmail.com">billkerr@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Edward Cherlin's challenge: "I defy anybody to write down a definition of Constructionism or Constructivism that the others here will agree with" </blockquote></div>