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in title, tags, annotations or urlhttp://web.media.mit.edu/~kbrennan/files/Brennan_Resnick_AERA2012_CT.pdf - 0 views
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Computational thinking is a phrase that has received considerable attention over the past several years - but there is little agreement about what computational thinking encompasses, and even less agreement about strategies for assessing the development of computational thinking in young people. We are interested in the ways that design-based learning activities - in particular, programming interactive media - support the development of computational thinking in young people. Over the past several years, we have developed a computational thinking framework that emerged from our studies of the activities of interactive media designers. Our context is Scratch - a programming environment that enables young people to create their own interactive stories, games, and simulations, and then share those creations in an online community with other young programmers from around the world. The first part of the paper describes the key dimensions of our computational thinking framework: computational concepts (the concepts designers engage with as they program, such as iteration, parallelism, etc.), computational practices (the practices designers develop as they engage with the concepts, such as debugging projects or remixing others' work), and computational perspectives (the perspectives designers form about the world around them and about themselves). The second part of the paper describes our evolving approach to assessing these dimensions, including project portfolio analysis, artifact-based interviews, and design scenarios. We end with a set of suggestions for assessing the learning that takes place when young people engage in programming.
Featured Resources | ScratchEd - 0 views
MIT Unleashes New Online Game for Math and Science | MindShift - 2 views
Junkyard Jumbotron - 0 views
Scratch Curriculum Guide Draft | ScratchEd - 0 views
MIT Mobile Web - 0 views
Learning science through gaming - MIT - 1 views
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""Vanished" is a two-month-long game, which debuted the week of April 4 and stems from an initial scenario revealed in recent video messages on the site. The premise is that people living in the future have contacted us in the present, to answer a question: What event occurred between our time and theirs that led to the loss of civilization's historical records? Students must decode clues in hidden messages, and in response find and provide information about Earth's current condition, such as temperature and species data, to help people in the future deduce what wound up happening. "
The Case for Play - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1 views
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"It's amazing what you can do with boxes and junk," he says. That could almost be the slogan of the New York Coalition for Play, which provided the boxes and junk. The nonprofit association ran one of the two dozen booths at the Ultimate Block Party, an event last fall that brought together companies like Disney, Crayola, and Lego, along with researchers from Columbia and MIT, and attracted thousands of parents and children. The goal was to "celebrate the science of play" and to push back against the notion that education happens only when students are seated at their desks, staring at chalkboards, and scribbling furiously in their notebooks.
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Within the world of those who take play seriously, there are multiple camps, each with its own dearly held tenets. There are the Free Players, who argue that play is a human right and that adults should more or less leave kids alone. There are the Play Skeptics, who see play as useful for blowing off steam but are dubious about its cognitive upside. And there are Play Moderates, who advocate a mix of free play, adult-guided play, and traditional classroom instruction.
MIT OpenCourseWare | Economics | 14.73 The Challenge of World Poverty, Fall 2009 | Home - 0 views
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A free online university course, but some of the readings might be useful to teachers in primary/secondary - DESCRIPTION: "This is a course for those who are interested in the challenge posed by massive and persistent world poverty, and are hopeful that economists might have something useful to say about this challenge. The questions we will take up include: Is extreme poverty a thing of the past? What is economic life like when living under a dollar per day? Why do some countries grow fast and others fall further behind? Does growth help the poor? Are famines unavoidable? How can we end child labor-or should we? How do we make schools work for poor citizens? How do we deal with the disease burden? Is micro finance invaluable or overrated? Without property rights, is life destined to be "nasty, brutish and short"? Has globalization been good to the poor? Should we leave economic development to the market? Should we leave economic development to non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Does foreign aid help or hinder? Where is the best place to intervene?"
Globe Genie - Joe McMichael - 0 views
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