Language Arts Stack

[Marielle Lange]

> Marielle,
>
> Is Papert's constructionism more "in" now than Piaget's  
> constructivism?  I
> am curious as my recent (finished last summer) MS in instructional  
> design
> & technology heavily stressed Piaget and I don't recall a word on
> constructionism (although perhaps a passing reference or remark to
> Papert)...

Sight! Universities! Sight!

Jean Piaget (1896-1980). Developmental psychologist (never worked in  
the education domain). His notion of constructivism refers to  
construction of intelligence (cognitive development). Like Einstein  
in Physics, he is incontestably one of the very great thinkers of  
last century, but many of his concepts have been revised and tweaked.
http://www.piaget.org/

Dr. Seymour Papert . MIT mathematician and prominent educator. He is  
one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, as well as the  
inventor of the LOGO programming language (1968). A collaborator with  
LEGO on their LOGO'ish-programmable Lego Mindstorms sets. One of his  
most influential contribution: S. Papert (1980), Mindstorm,,  
Children, Computers and Powerful ideas, Basic Books, Inc., New York,  
l.q80.
http://www.papert.org/

"The developer of an interesting and original vision on learning,  
built upon the work of Jean Piaget (constructionism). Rethinks how  
schools should work based on these theories of learning. Also focuses  
on the impact of new technologies on learning in general and schools  
as a learning organisation in particular."

Another big name of the constructivist movement that your teachers  
may have omitted to mention is John Dewey.
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-dewey.htm

I let you browse these pages and make up your own mind ;-).

Marielle

Ah, yeh, as I know you teach an introductory computer science course:
<https://www.cs.tcd.ie/crite/publications/sources/programmingv1.pdf>  
(Teaching Programming, The State of the Art)

For the ones interested in the mindstorm approach, a recent paper is  
"Little Languages for Little Robots" <http://www.jadud.com/people/mcj/ 
files/2003-PPIG-lllr.pdf>