[Educators] learning by interacting with physical world

Edward Cherlin echerlin at gmail.com
Mon Aug 8 01:31:40 EDT 2011


On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 21:29, Arjun Sarwal <arjun at laptop.org> wrote:
> I am looking for any interesting material that can help me understand
> better the fundamental process of  how do children and young
> adults learn ; especially with regard to interaction with external
> physical environment. Examples could be learning music, learning
> through science experiments etc

There is a huge amount of material in this vein. First, there is the
literature and also the learning materials created by or inspired by
luminaries such as

* Maria Montessori, Montessori schools
* Caleb Gattegno, Cuisenaire rods
* Jean Piaget, scientific study of children
* John Holt, How Children Learn, How Children Fail
* Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas;
The Children's Machine
* Doug Engelbart, The Mother of All Demos; Enhancing Global Intelligence

and many more on educational techniques and on child development
before schooling begins. Then there is software such as

* Smalltalk (Alan Kay and his team at Xerox PARC)
* Logo (Seymour Papert and others, MIT Learning Lab)
* Sugar (Nicholas Negroponte, Walter Bender and others at OLPC and Sugar Labs)
* Dr Geo II (Hilaire Fernandes)

> Could you please point me to any research papers/thesis, or
> interesting real life experiments you might've come across that you
> thought were particularly insightful.

There are far too many to list here. If you tell us what you want to
do with the information, we can give you more  specific advice.

But I can give you a few pointers to get started. Here are several TED
Talks of interest

* Sugata Mitra, Hole in the Wall Computer
http://www.ted.com/search?q=sugata+mitra
* Deb Roy, who recorded 90,000 hours of his son's learning to speak
http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word.html

> Thanks in advance
>
> Regards,
> Arjun
> _______________________________________________
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> Educators at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/educators
>



-- 
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks


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