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Technologies for lifelong kindergarten

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Abstract

In kindergartens and early-elementary classrooms, manipulative materials (such as Cuisenaire Rods and Pattern Blocks) play an important role in childrens learning, enabling children to explore mathematical and scientific concepts (such as number, shape, and size) through direct manipulation of physical objects. But as children grow older, and learn more advanced concepts, the educational focus shifts away from direct manipulation to more abstract formal methods. This paper discusses a new generation of computationally enhanced manipulative materials, called digital manipulatives, designed to radically change this traditional progression. These new manipulatives (such as programmable building bricks and communicating beads) aim to enable children to continue to learn with a kindergarten approach even as they grow olderand also to enable young children to learn concepts (in particular, systems concepts such as feedback and emergence) that were previously considered too advanced for them.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the MIT Media Laboratory, USA

    Mitchel Resnick (associate professor)

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  1. Mitchel Resnick
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Additional information

The Digital Manipulatives research effort has been a true group effort, with contributions from many people in the author's research group at the MIT Media Laboratory. Programmable Bricks and Crickets have been developed primarily by Fred Martin, Brian Silverman, Bakhtiar Mikhak, and Robbie Berg; BitBalls by Kwin Kramer, Robbie Berg, Fred Martin, and Rrian Silverman; Digital Beads by Kwin Kramer and Rick Borovoy; Thinking Tags by Rick Borovoy, Fred Martin, Vanessa Colella, Brian Silverman, and Kwin Kramer. The work of Seymour Papert provided a foundation and inspiration for many of these projects. This research has been supported by generous grants from the LEGO Group, the National Science Foundation (grants 9358519-RED and CDA-9616444), and the MIT Media Laboratory's Things That Think, Digital Life, and Toys of Tomorrow consortia. Portions of this paper previously appeared in a paper in the proceedings of the CHI 98 conference (Resnick, et al., 1998).

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Resnick, M. Technologies for lifelong kindergarten. ETR&D 46, 43–55 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02299672

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