Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas

The process reminds one of tinkering; learning consists of building up a set of materials and tools that one can handle and manipulate. Perhaps most central of all, it is a process of working with what you’ve got. We’re all familiar with this process on the conscious level, for example, when we attack a problem empirically, trying out all the thing

Out of the crucible of computational concepts and metaphors, of predicted widespread computer power and of actual experiments with children, the idea of Piagetian learning has emerged as an important organizing principle. Translated into practical terms this idea sets a research agenda concerned with creating conditions for children to explore “nat

The purpose in working on the problem is not to “get the right answer,” but to look sensitively for conflict between different ways of thinking about the problem: for example, between two intuitive ways of thinking or between an intuitive and a formal analysis. When you recognize conflicts, the next step is to work through them until you feel more

As a mathematician I know that one of the most powerful ideas in the history of science was that of differential analysis. From Newton onward, the relationship between the local and the global pretty well set the agenda for mathematics.

Similarly, when one enters a new domain of knowledge, one initially encounters a crowd of new ideas. Good learners are able to pick out those that are powerful and congenial. Others who are less skillful need help from teachers and friends. But we must not forget that while good teachers play the role of mutual friends who can provide introductions

In pursuit of our theme of using the computer to understand scientific knowing as rooted in personal knowing, we shall next look at ways in which scientific knowledge is more similar to knowing a person than similar to knowing a fact or having a skill.

Let us begin with a closer look at the problem of prerequisites. Someone who wanted to learn about aerodynamics might lose interest upon seeing the set of prerequisites, including mechanics and hydrodynamics, that follow an exciting course description in a college catalogue. If one wants to learn about Shakespeare, one finds no list of prerequisite

Piaget has studied the spontaneous learning of children and found both steps at work—the child absorbs the new into the old in a process that Piaget calls assimilation, and the child constructs his knowledge in the course of actively working with it. But there are often roadblocks in the process. New knowledge often contradicts the old, and effecti

is not uncommon for people with no knowledge of computers to use such concepts as “input,” “output,” and “feedback” to describe their own mental processes. We shall give an example of this process by showing how programming concepts can be used as a conceptual framework for learning a particular physical skill, namely, juggling. Thus we look at pro