This is a really long quote, but it really impressed me.
"At one Hong Kong workshop, an 11-year-old girl named Julia was inspired by a pair of shoes that she had seen that contained embedded lights that flashed as the shoes moved. But Julia wasn’t interested in buying shoes with pre-programmed lighting patterns; she wanted to create her own patterns. So she connected a Cricket and a series of lights to her boots, then installed a sensor near the bottom of the boot, where it could detect the up-and-down motion of her foot. She programmed the Cricket to change the colors of the lights, based on how fast she was walking.
At the same workshop, an entrepreneurial 12-year-old named Anthony came up with a business idea: a wearable jukebox. He cut a coin slot in the top of a cardboard box, then installed sensors on the underside of the slot to measure the size of the coin inserted. He then programmed the Cricket to play different songs based on what coin the customer put into the box. For Julia and Anthony, the Cricket provided a way to create and personalize their own interactive inventions. As Julia explained, “With Crickets, you don’t have to use what someone else made. You can make it yourself.”"
I liked this quote, because it shows a young person's capacity for achievement and creativity when given an opportunity to create and flourish. I think that much too often we stifle young people's creativity, when we should be encouraging it. Especially looking at something like this, I know maybe two adults who could create something like this. I wonder how many others could if given the opportunity and free-range like this as youngsters.
This article gives help and advice for teachers and how they can use technology to help them teach. It even gives links under each point, that may be beneficial to that point.
Resnick, M. (2007). Sowing the seeds for a more creative society. Learning and leading with technology, 18-23. Retrieved from http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/Learning-Leading-final.pdf
That quote also shows that when class activities are relevant to students and model activities that adults do in the real world students are motivated!
ReplyDeleteTotal 5/5