Comments on: [berkman] Berkman lunch: Walter Bender, Sugar Labs

By: johne

johne — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:45:48 +0000

“Is the constructionist theory cross-cultural?”
“Constructionism is built on first principles that are not culturally dependent… And what’s the role of the teacher? The teacher is unleashed. They have a lot more fun.”
Good question, but I’m not so sure about the answer. For example, there are a lot of cultures, not least in the United States, which would cringe at the idea of a mid-level authority figure like the teacher being “unleashed,” and “having fun.”

By: Jeremy Price

Jeremy Price — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:50:13 +0000

David,

Sounds like a good question indeed! I will have to follow up on this talk (if an archive of the webcast is made available?)…. Thanks again for the take on it!

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By: davidw

davidw — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:27:02 +0000

Jeremy, I’ve fixed the Constructionism refs. Thanks. And: D’oh!

On the backchannel (irc://irc.freenode.net/berkman), someone asked whether the project (and constructionism) acknowledged the difference in learning styles. A good question, I thought.

By: Jeremy Price

Jeremy Price — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:03:41 +0000

I’m sorry I missed this — it looks like it was interesting. Thanks for the live blogging, I enjoyed reading it.

Just to clarify a little bit, constructionism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.....ng_theory)) is the theory developed by Papert.

Also, your question about the cross-cultural application of constructivism as a theory of learning holds some traction among educators and psychologists. In addition, constructivism is one of those terms that can be best explained in terms of its messiness (perhaps best explained by a cloud of metadata?). Some don’t delve into the messiness to sufficient depth, so sometimes constructivism in practice becomes a one-dimensional cardboard cutout representation of really interesting ways to think about knowing, learning, and teaching.

It looks like Walter Bender is doing some really good work, and thanks for blogging his presentation.