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Syllabus

Sept 9: Introduction

Sept 16: Constructionism

Required readings

Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. Basic Books. (Foreword, Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 8)

Resnick, M. (2007). All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten. Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity & Cognition, Washington, DC.

Optional readings

Papert, S. (2000). What's the big idea: Towards a pedagogy of idea power. IBM Systems Journal, vol. 39, no. 3-4.

Resnick, M., Maloney, J., Monroy-Hernandez, A., Rusk, N., Eastmond, E., Brennan, K., Millner, A., Rosenbaum, E., Silver, J., Silverman, B., Kafai, Y. (in press). Scratch: Programming for Everyone. To be published in Communications of the ACM, November 2009.

Activity

Make a Scratch project to introduce yourself. Add your project to the class gallery on the Scratch website by end of day Tuesday.

Sept 23: Learning Sciences (Guest: Janet Kolodner)

Required readings

Sawyer, K. (2006). The New Science of Learning. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of The Learning Sciences, Cambridge University Press.

Collins, A. & Halverson, R. (2009). Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and the Schools. Teachers College Press.

Optional readings

Kolodner, J. L. (2004). The Learning Sciences: Past, Present, and Future. Educational Technology: The Magazine for Managers of Change in Education, 44(3), 37-42.

Activity

Create a story that combines on-screen and off-screen, using LEGO WeDo.

Sept 30: New Media Literacy

Facilitators: Lass, Marie

Required readings

Jenkins, H. et al. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. MacArthur Foundation.

Optional readings

diSessa, A. (2000). Changing Minds: Computers, Learning, and Literacy (Chapter 1). MIT Press.

Activity

Create a gallery on the Scratch website with at least 10 projects related to a theme you are interested in.

Oct 7: Tangible Learning

Facilitators: Jenn, Pol, Huang

Required readings

Eisenberg, M. (2003). Mindstuff: Educational Technology Beyond the Computer. Convergence.

Optional readings

Resnick, M. (2006). Computer as Paintbrush: Technology, Play, and the Creative Society. Play = Learning: How play motivates and enhances children's cognitive and social-emotional growth. Oxford University Press.

Resnick, M., Martin, F., Berg, R., Borovoy, R., Colella, V., Kramer, K., and Silverman, B. (1998). Digital Manipulatives: New Toys to Think With. Proceedings of the CHI '98 conference, pp. 281-287.

Activity

Create a personally-meaningful tangible interface with a Scratch Sensor Board.

Oct 14: No Class (Media Lab sponsor week)

Oct 21: Communities of Learners

Facilitators: Victoria, Kumiko, Florence, Amos

Required readings

Ito, M., et al. (2008). Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. MacArthur Foundation Reports.

Monroy-Hernández, A. and Resnick, M. (2008). Empowering kids to create and share programmable media, Interactions, March-April 2008.

Optional readings

Fischer, G. (2004). Social Creativity: Turning Barriers into Opportunities for Collaborative Design. Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference

Brown, J.S., and Adler, R. (2008). Minds on Fire. Educause Review.

Activity

Find three examples of how the Scratch website is designed to support collaboration. For each example, discuss: (1) how it fosters and encourages collaborations, (2) what are the limitations, (3) how it could be extended or enhanced. What new features could further enhance collaboration on the Scratch website?

Oct 28: Relationships in Learning

Facilitators: Debbie, April, Rita, Takashi

Required readings

Brown, J.S., Collins, A., and Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, vol. 18, no. 1.

Optional readings

Duckworth, E. (1987). The Having of Wonderful Ideas (Chapter 1). Teachers College Press.

Activity

Help someone else learn Scratch.

Nov 4: Supporting Communities of Learners

Facilitators: Daniel, Jin Joo, Kathleen, Ryan

Required readings

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Collier Books.

Optional readings

Sawyer, K. (2006). The Schools of the Future. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of The Learning Sciences, Cambridge Univ. Press.

Barab, S.A., MaKinster, J.G., & Scheckler, R. (2003). Designing system dualities: Characterizing a web-supported professional development community. The Information Society, 19(3), 237-256.

Activity

Write a draft of the proposal for your final project.

Nov 11: No Class (Veteran's Day)

Activity

Submit a final draft of your final project proposal.

Nov 18: Diversity and Pluralism

Facilitators: Kronick, Emily

Required readings

Turkle, S., & Papert, S. (1990). Epistemological Pluralism. Signs, vol. 16, no. 1

Buechley, L. LilyPad Arduino: How an open source hardware kit is sparking new engineering and design communities.

Optional readings

Gardner, H. (1998). A Multiplicity of Intelligences. Scientific American.

Margolis, J. et. al. (2008). Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing.

Activity

Create an interactive painting using Leah Buechley's Paper Computing kit. Please take pictures to document your painting.

Provide feedback on peer project proposals.

Nov 25: No class (Thanksgiving holiday)

Dec 2: Games and Learning

Facilitators: Gagne, Kent, Juhong

Required readings

Gee, J. P. (2003). What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (Chapter 1, Chapter 2).

Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2003). Rules of Play (Preface, Chapter 7). MIT Press.

Optional readings

Fortugno, N., & Zimmerman, E. (2005). Learning to Play to Learn: Lessons in Educational Game Design.

Kafai, Y. B. (2006). Playing and making games for learning: Instructionist and constructionist perspectives for game studies. Games and Culture, 1(1), 36-40.

No Activity

Dec 9: Final Project Presentations

Participation

Your participation in the class takes several forms: completing the weekly readings and activities, contributing to the class blog, actively participating in all class sessions, and facilitating discussion and activities during one class session.

Each week two or three students (to be determined in the second class) will serve as facilitators. The facilitators should post their analyses of the readings (as well as questions to provoke other class members) on the class blog by no later than Friday at 5pm. The rest of the class should post responses to these questions by Monday at 5pm, and everyone should provide a comment on a response by Tuesday evening.

Additionally, everyone in the class is encouraged to share their experiences and thoughts on the weekly activity. Responses to the activity questions (if applicable) should be posted on the blog by Tuesday evening.

In addition to their online contributions, the facilitators will coordinate group activity and discussion for the first hour of class.

Final Project

For the final project, your assignment is to design and test new features, new support materials, or new activities for a creative learning technology -- and to write a "design brief" discussing the motivations, rationale, and principles underlying your design.

You are welcome (in fact, encouraged) to work in groups. If possible, you should test your tool/materials/activities with sample users.

Here is an outline of the key elements of a design brief.

Below are four examples of design briefs from last year's course. We hope that they will provide you with a sense of how and what to include in a design brief.

Adam Kumpf - Object investigator: An interface for thinking about the objects that inspire us

Agnes Chang - Tinkering together: Enabling synchronous creativity and distributed collaboration for kids

Justin Lai - Reflection via communication in Scratch

Sophia Yuditskaya - Designing groups for Scratch: Conceptual exploration

Grading

Grading will be based one-third on class participation, one-third on contribution to the class blog, and one-third on the final project.