Kafai, Y.B. & Resnick, M., eds. (1995). Constructionism in practice: Designing, Learning and Thinking in a digital world, Retrieved March 20, 2006, from http:\/\/www.gseis.ucla.edu\/faculty\/kafai\/faculty\/Book_CIP_Intro.html.<\/p>\n
Do you know that tingly feeling? The one you get when seemingly disparate pieces of learning come together? I just had it…I’m reading the introduction to a book of essays on constructionsim<\/a>. One essay in particular caught my attention:<\/p>\n “In the final chapter of the section, “They Have Their Own Thoughts,” Paula Hooper describes her research at an African-centered community school. The school, Paige Academy, aims to create a community and culture rooted in African-American ways of knowing, values, and interactions. Hooper presents a “learning story” of an 8-year-old girl working on a Logo project. The story examines how children, in the process of making new computational artifacts, can take control of their own learning, developing and extending their own ideas. It also highlights the need for school environments to support and legitimize children’s own personal ways of thinking and mental and physical constructs.”<\/p>\n For another class, I’m reading Flow<\/em> by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. His major tenet is that to be happy we must be able to control our consciousness and I would argue that being able to control your own learning is part of that. He tells stories of people in prison camps who managed to maintain their sanity precisely because they could develop and extend their own ideas. That was all they had to work with. I think constructionism is at the heart of Flow, which Csikszentmihalyi defines as “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter” (p. 4). <\/p>\n Flow comes when we are constructing things. Csikszentmihalyi recommends, for instance, that while doing crossword puzzles is good, constructing them ourselves is even better. And in one of the essays in the book on constructionism, “Learning Design by Making Games,” Yasmin Kafai describes what happens when students make their own games rather than playing those created by others. They develop content knowledge but also process skills. <\/p>\n And there’s that tingly feeling again because I’ve been spending time thinking about gaming and reading Steven Johnson and Clark Aldridge on gaming and gamers. The circle of learning…and the big question: what about games and education? And…how can I incorporate some game-based learning in 304 next semester?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kafai, Y.B. & Resnick, M., eds. (1995). Constructionism in practice: Designing, Learning and Thinking in a digital world, Retrieved March 20, 2006, from http:\/\/www.gseis.ucla.edu\/faculty\/kafai\/faculty\/Book_CIP_Intro.html. Do you know that tingly feeling? The one you get when seemingly disparate pieces of learning come together? I just had it…I’m reading the introduction to \u2026 Continue reading