The learning methodology is the result of work performed over several decades by visionaries of the use of technology in education, including among others Alan Kay, Marvin Minsky and specially Seymour Papert. Kay described long ago his vision of the Dynabook, much before laptops and the internet were invented. The XO laptop may perhaps be the current computer that most resembles that vision. Kay has continued speaking about computers and education at several forums - see references at the end. Minsky has produced several interesting essays on education. Papert has written three very influential books on this - "Mindstorms", "The Children's machine" and "The connnected family". He is also the inventor of the Logo computer language, that has been used in some schools since the '70s to help children learn mathematical and geometrical concepts and computer programming by exploring the movements and drawings of a turtle-icon on the screen. Graphical versions of Logo-like languages are used in the Lego Mindstorms robotic sets and in the software Microworlds. Papert is also the author of the Constructionism learning methodology used in the OLPC project. Constructionism is based on the observation that children learn best in action, specially actions that lead to the design of diverse types of objects such as documents, paintings, drawings, animations, stories, web sites, computer programs, music pieces, physical scale models and so on that represent the result of learning and of which the children must feel proud - ("here mommy - see what I have done!"). The concentration required in design activities reinforces learning. The children should be allowed to explore the design space and choose the best alternatives. To this, Constructionism adds the requirements that such constructions be shared among peers and improved with peer feedback; reflection on ones's learning is also required. Learning activities should allow extensions, such that small kids may engage in simple versions of the activities ("low floor") and older children may extend the activity in several directions ("high ceiling"). While exploring the design space, children should be guided to discover by themselves what Papert calls powerful ideas that can be applied in a wide variety of circumstances, such as scientific experimentation, the concept of a measure or a scale and so on. These specifications of Constructionism impose very strong requirements for teachers, who have to become facilitators of children's learning rather than Instructionists, where it is pretended that what is explained by the teacher is automatically assimilated by the kids. And also impose very strong requirements for educational software. For instance, software that only explains and tests, even if decorated with wonderful multimedia animations and movies, is not Constructionist, as the kids have no way to alter the software flow nor produce their own objects. Papert refers to such software as "The computer programming the kids", rather than the other way around... Indeed, computer languages for children embody some of the best characteristics of Constructionism. The educational software that comes with the OLPC laptop is explicitly designed with Constructionist ideas. Several of the learning activities included with this machine allow Constructions of several kinds. Top of the list are TortugArt, a graphical extension of Logo and Etoys, a graphical computer language with a very low floor and very high ceiling. Etoys is itself an interface to Squeak, the last evolution of Smalltalk, a language co-invented by Alan Kay in the '80s. There is also Scratch, another graphical language based on Squeak; Tam-Tam, a series of activities to produce music, where the small kids can listen to simple instruments and older kids can even progress to invent their own instruments and combine them in full orchestra performances; Flip-Sticks, to program simple animations; Paint; and several others. These activities run on Sugar, a very simple operating system and graphical interface for children that again supports Constructionism. For instance, most activities can be easily shared between the children who can Paint, Browse or Write documents together sharing the screens of their laptops. Sugar automates this sharing. Whenever a child changes activities, a screen pops up where he or she is invited to write up a reflection of what has been done and what has been learned. A Journal keeps track automagically of everything that the children have produced including every reflection. The implementation of the deployment strategy is perhaps the Achilles' heel of the project. Although the project has produced some deployment guidelines and cost estimation spreadsheets, the changes required for professors, schools and school systems are very substantial. In some of his writings, Papert reflects on the enormous difficulties involved in School Reforms; so many have been attempted with the result that the School Inmune System either rejects the reform or absorbs and adapts the invading reform and the reformers to its Old Ways with the result that no substantial change is really made. Constructionism requires a very different orientation to the way kids learn that must be incorporated in the design of learning activities and in the attitudes of professors towards learning. It may even be said that Teaching attracts people that like to order kids around, and this conflicts with the need to become a facilitator of learning. School Systems impose a fixed curriculum, fixed learning outcomes and standardized tests that again conflict with children exploring their own learning paths. Programming children to fixed outcomes is not very compatible to Constructionism educational philosophy -and this not only refers to certain kinds of educational software but to whole school systems. Papert and the OLPC project do not clarify how to do the transition between the Status Quo and the New Way of Learning... perhaps they expect that since most top-down approaches to school reform have failed, a bottom-up revolution of connected, digitaly native children will finally succeed in improving education. |
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Background on the OLPC project |