LS 452, Spring 2017
Updated: 03/27/17
Uri Wilensky
Assignment #1
• Write a Gears Essay (Due Sunday, April 2 at 12PM)
A gears essay is a piece of cognitive and affective archeology. Go back to your childhood and find an “object” (or perhaps an experience) that was in relationship to you the way that “gears” are to Papert. Though, at first, it may seem that there is not any such object, persist in your “digging” till you find something. It need not have occasioned the overwhelming love, engagement and cognitive productivity that gears had for Papert. It will suffice to find an object, experience, activity that occupied your attention in childhood and which, you can now see, had a strong influence on the way you currently think. If, as Papert claims, we learn by assimilating new concepts to our collection of models. the object you write about should be a “cognitively strong” model in your collection - one that has helped you to understand other concepts on your path of intellectual growth. Once you have described this object and your experience with it, please also reflect on: How has this object shaped my cognitive growth? How has it shaped my affective relation to various disciplines? What has been foregrounded by using this object as a lens -- that is what is easier to see and understand because of this object? What has been backgrounded -- made harder to see? Write 2 - 3 pages on this and send it by email (no later than Sunday 12:00 PM) to uri@northwestern.edu. I will forward all of the essays to the class on Sunday. Please read each others’ essays before class and bring copies of your essay to class for every student.
• Reread Mindstorms (Due Monday, April 3, 5:00 PM)
Send a quote from it and one new reaction to the quote to the class list (constructionism@ccl.northwestern.edu). Come to class prepared to delve into one issue.
Assignment #2
(due Monday, April 11th at 5:00 PM)Read
the following 5 selections. Send 2 new quotes (one from Piaget and one from Papert) and 2 new reactions to the class list.
We will choose one person to prepare a PowerPoint and lead discussion.
- Gruber, H.E. & Voneche, J.J., Eds. (1977). The Essential Piaget. New York: Basic Books. (Introduction, pp. xvi-xliv). [PDF]
- Piaget, J. (1954). The Construction of Reality in the Child. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 1-96. [PDF]
- Papert, S. (1996). A Word for Learning. In Y. Kafai & M. Resnick (Eds.), Constructionism in Practice, (pp. 9 – 24). Mahwah: New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [PDF]
- Papert, S. (1988). The Conservation of Piaget: The Computer as Grist to the Constructivist Mill. In Constructivism in the Computer Age. NY: Lawrence Erlbaum. [PDF]
- Papert, S. (1999). Papert on Piaget. Time Magazine. [HTML]
Write
Revise gears essay in response to my comments.Assignment #3
Read (for next week April 17th at 3PM)
Sugat has been asked to produce powerpoint slide/s on these and show next class.
• Write
Delay this assignment, not due yet Write a short essay (no more than 2 pages): What is development? Is it different from learning? How or how not?
• Conduct a Piagetian clinical interview (Due April 25th)
Find a youngish child (less than 8 is best) and conduct a Piagetian interview with the child. You can use a question that you have found in the readings or make up your own. Videotape the interview and transcribe it. Bring a flash drive with the original video to class as well as copies of the transcription (the part of the interview you want to focus on) for everyone in class. Try to hone your technique using the readings (and video of Piaget) as a guide.
Write a shortish essay analyzing the interview. If you have trouble locating a subject, ask me -- I may be able to help.