The Constructivist Consortium is a unique idea. LCSI along with five other like-minded companies - Tech4Learning, Fablevision, Schoolkit, Inspiration, and GenYes - joined together to promote not a product, but an idea - a way of thinking about how learning and our role in the process. What do these companies have in common? They are all companies that offer products or services that reflect a constructivist philosophy.
The one-day Constructivist Celebration - our inaugural event held the day before NECC 2007 officially started - was reminiscent of the “good ole’” days, when educators were learners and everyone joyously participated in discovering how technology could be used to transform a classroom from a 19th century factory into a 21st century celebration of thinking and creativity. The event sold out quickly - over 100 people attended (sadly, we had to turn away many others due to space restrictions). The day was dedicated to Seymour Papert, who is still recovering from a serious accident in Vietnam. (LCSI and Fablevision announced that they would make a donation to the Seymour Papert Recovery Fund- www.seymourpapertrecoveryfund.com - for each person who participated in a CC prize drawing.)
Participants were encouraged to be creative, develop projects with the various available digital tools, share ideas and experiences and make new friends. Some worked on programming a game or creating multimedia tours of the venue - the Atlanta Botanical Gardens - while others honed their drawing skills or just chatted with other constructivist educators coping with an NCLB world.
The day ended with the attendees sharing and showing projects and creations they had worked on during the event. Many educators thanked us for this great opportunity that allowed them to learn, collaborate and have fun.
Why was the response so good? Our belief is that people are tired of focusing on test scores and memorization rather than on learning, problem solving, creativity, and reflection. The attendees were learners, not teachers or administrators. They were artists, not critics. Best of all, there were a lot of us, altogether, sharing and connecting.
June 29th, 2007
I’ve been playing around with the Apple iSight camera… Photo Booth is fun, but there are some additional tricks you can do when you use the camera from within MicroWorlds (well yes, the new version of MicroWorlds EX for Macintosh supports the Apple’s iSight camera).
The first ideas that came to my mind? Time lapse photos, claymation, experiments (plant growing), accelerating slow phenomenons (like the traveling of the clouds or the moon), etc.
Here’s an example of procedure one could use to create a flip book out of iSight snapshots. Change all the numbers to get the effect and speed you need!
This procedure creates the 15 “photo” shapes in the Public Shapes Tab:
to timelapse
clearshape [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15]
opencapture
repeat 15 [phototoshape wait 600]
closecapture
end
After running the procedure, create a flip book turtle:
- Select all the photo shapes (click on the first shape of the set, hold down the Shift key, click on the last shape of the set);
- Choose Copy in the Edit menu;
- Create a turtle, open its backpack, open its Shapes Tab;
- Paste the copied shapes in the turtle’s Shapes Tab.
Then, create this procedure in the turtle’s Procedures Tab:
to animate
setsh [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15]
repeat 15 [fd 0 wait 10]
end
May 22nd, 2007
In an earlier post, we provided documentation for an interesting MicroWorlds EX project called The SUMS, developed by Gary Stager. The SUMS is a cross between Tamagachis and another piece of software you may have heard about, The Sims. The difference, of course, is that in The SUMS, YOU build your world and characters and YOU decide what they should or should not do. This is not a short project - so, if you’re looking for something to do in a 45 minute class, this is probably not it. On the other hand, building a world shouldn’t be a short-term project. It takes planning, thought, work, and a good sense of humour. And it should take at least a week.
The world you build can be as big or small as you choose. With some additional planning, different people can build SUMS that can be imported into your world and you can export some of your SUMS to other people’s worlds, thus adding a whole new meaning to the term “digital immigrant”.
Do you remember the scene in the movie “The Wizard of Oz” (or in the book - I read all the Oz books), when Toto pulls back the curtain in the Great Hall and there is the wizard controlling all the gadgets and special effects? No magical being, no supernatural hero, just a very creative guy from Kansas. Creating the SUMS is like pulling back the SIMS curtain - and revealing all the programming techniques and tricks that can be controlled by - You! . So, give it a try and let us know how it turns out.
The Great Oz has spoken!
April 17th, 2007
The Constructivist Celebration @ NECC
You are invited to attend The Constructivist Celebration @ NECC
9:00 am to 4:00 pm - June 24, 2007
Atlanta Botanical Garden
Atlanta, Georgia
The Constructivist Celebration is the inaugural event for the new Constructivist Consortium, an industry cooperative designed to showcase software and curriculum products that support creativity, constructivist learning and student empowerment.
Join colleagues in a day-long celebration of creativity, computing & constructivist learning at the beautiful Atlanta Botanical Garden.
Peter Reynolds and Gary Stager kick the day off with an inspirational keynote address. Then it’s your turn to jump into exciting hands-on projects led by some of the nation’s finest edtech leaders. Activities may include claymation, digital photography, video game design, animation, simulation building or a walk through the gardens. The day ends with an opportunity to share your creations and a panel discussion, “Sustaining Constructivist Learning,” featuring leaders of LCSI, GenYES, Schoolkit, Tech4Learning & Fablevision.
In addition to a day full of learning adventures, your registration includes a southern BBQ lunch and a fabulous collection of materials.
LCSI will provide each participant with a single-user license copy of MicroWorlds EX & MicroWorlds JR. Tech4Learning will provide each participant with a single-user licensed copy of their software products: Frames, Pixie, ImageBlender, WebBlender & Twist. Materials from other members of the consortium will also be available.
Registration is extremely limited! Only $25! Register today at
http://www.constructivistconsortium.org
April 17th, 2007
the_sums.docThe Brief
Welcome to the World of the SUMs! The SUMs are the super ultra modern species, a collection of creatures and environments limited only by your imagination. SUMs work, laugh, love, play, eat, sleep and do all sorts of other things you program them to do. Once programmed, you will be able to share your SUMs with other MW EX users and see how your progenies will react to new environments.
Full document download available above.
April 17th, 2007
I was taught geometry (so many years ago) in a “descriptive” manner: an equilateral triangle is a “thing” with three equal sides and three equal angles - given that they should total 180, each angle has 60 degrees.
Well… In Logo talk, taking a shortcut from this description leads to “repeat 3 [fd 50 rt 60]”, which, we all know, doesn’t quite do the job.
Enter a new rule and a new way. Take a piece or hard wire and pliers. Measure 10 inches and bend the wire to make an equilateral triangle. Measure another 10 inch and bend the wire again. And again. The constant here is “three equal sides are still… three equal sides” but the difference is: how much did I bend each time? That’s 120 degrees, not 60. Hence the new rule: the total turtle trip: to make a closed shape, your total “bending angles” will be 360 degrees, as opposed to “internal angles” totaling 180 degrees. Following the new rule, the instruction becomes repeat 3 [fd 50 rt 120].
Making this distinction between “descriptive geometry” and “constructivism” doesn’t go as well with squares because of “coincidence.” Describing a square, you will say that it has four 90 degrees angles. Constructing a square, you will make four turns of 90 degrees, whether using the descriptive method or the “wire-bending” method. But that’s just a coincidence. Any other regular polygon will display the “triangle” difference described above.
Fancier example? A Logo oval.
Recently, someone on the MicroWorlds Forum asked for some advice about a way to introduce the concept of “logo-made” oval. I went to my classic old school formula and came up with something like:
to oval2 :hsize :vsize
make "x1 minus :hsize
make "x2 :hsize
make "y1 minus :vsize
make "y2 :vsize
make "a abs (0.5 * (:x2 - :x1))
make "b abs (0.5 * (:y2 - :y1))
make "inc pi * 2 / (:a + :b)
make "centx (:x1 + :x2 + 0.5) * 0.5
make "centy (:x1 + :x2 + 0.5) * 0.5
pu setpos se :centx + :a :centy pd
dotimes [i 360] [setpos se ((:centx + :a) * cos :i) ((:centy - :b) * sin :i)]
end
Well that works, but my constructivist-mathematician friend Sergei replied something like: consider an oval that’s horizontally flattened. You can say that it “borrowed” the characteristics in one way, say horizontally, but sort of “failed” in the other way, say vertically. An oval is a “good” circle horizontally and a “failed” circle vertically.
To build a circle-based oval, he uses two turtle, one doing a circle, and another one “borrowing” the coordinates from the first one, borrowing the x coordinate directly, and borrowing, with some modifications, the y coordinate.
The procedures go like this (with t1 and t2 on the page)
to oval
t1, home pu
t2, home pd
repeat 360 [followme]
end
to followme
t1, fd 1 rt 1
t2, setpos list ask "t1 [xcor] 0.5 * ask "t1 [ycor]
end
You can adapt the followme procedure to draw other interesting things, such as a sine curve.
Besides that… here’s a crazy question… Regardless of how it’s been conceived (descriptively or constructively), why is it that we like to have our shapes “sitting flatly” at the end? Why is it that so many people prefer
cg
rt 60
repeat 3 [fd 50 rt 120]
to
cg
repeat 3 [fd 50 rt 120]
March 23rd, 2007
I’m a little bit puzzled. I wanted to program a bouncing ball… This involved programming speed, and the gain of speed as a factor of time and gravity, plus some “loss” at each bounce due to the elasticity of the materials.
I started with what I expected would be a “forever bouncing ball”, because I had programmed only speed and gravity. No loss. Testing the program, I found that the ball bounces less and less, just like a normal ball, until it stops bouncing completely. But there’s no code that says to do that!
The program is all contained in the backpack of the turtle. Nothing complex really; the code appears below. The “ball” turtle has a “turtle variable”: SPEED, an “Onclick” instruction: BOUNCE, and an “OnTouching” instruction: REVORSTOP. The bouncing is just a “reversal” of the speed. If you hit the ground at a speed of –15.5, you bounce with a speed of 15.5 (again, that seems like a “perfectly elastic collision” that would run forever)…
The “floor” is a second large flat turtle.
Slow down the action if you wish (Process Tab).
to bounce
setspeed 0
forever [move]
end
to move
fd speed
setspeed speed - 1.1
end
to revorstop
if (abs speed) < 3 [stopall]
setspeed minus speed
end
March 13th, 2007
Seen in a Michigan school a few years ago:
A school project consisting of finding 50 ways to make a square. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
fd 50 rt 90 fd 50 rt 90 fd 50 rt 90 fd 50 rt 90
repeat 4 [fd 50 rt 90]
same, with bk instead of fd
setpos [0 0] setpos [0 50] setpos [50 50] setpos [50 0] setpos [0 0]
create a square shape and stamp it
create a procedure with the instruction 1 or 2 above
create a procedure with one input for the size
create a procedure with two inputs (size and angle)
use glide instead of fd
use four turtles with different starting positions
calculate and use a diagonal method
place four turtles in appropriate spots and have a fifth turtle meet them
Have two turtles do half of the job, starting from the the home position
…
February 20th, 2007
Welcome to LCSI’s blog (or should we call it our Blogo?). This blog is maintained and managed by Alain, Shawn and Susan, longtime members of the LCSI staff. The name of the blog reflects what we tend to do when we use MicroWorlds - a combination of tinkering and lots of thinking.
We will use this space to share helpful tips and activity ideas with you and to let you know the latest news from LCSI. The tips and ideas are based on questions students and teachers have about how to use MicroWorlds EX, MicroWorlds Robotics, MicroWorlds JR and other LCSI products. For a number of years we looked at different ways to share these questions and answers with a wider audience. This blog gives us the medium in which to do it.
Please feel free to comment or ask us additional questions if you need more information. (Comments are moderated, so it may take a day to see your comment on our blog.)
Comments welcome
Original posts are created by Alain, Shawn and Susan, members of the LCSI staff. Comments are welcome, and moderated - allow a day or two for your comment to appear in the blog.
February 5th, 2007
