Mitch Resnick on The Spirit of Play and Lifelong Kindergarten(http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/)
A kindergarten approach to creativity around a childhood spiral
Imagine, create, play, share, reflect imagine.
Too often we push down learning from the upper grades down to kindergarten and we should do the exact opposite: take what's great about schooling in kindergarten and push it up into the other levels of schools.
Low floors, a high ceiling and wide walls.
Mitch was involved in the team that created Lego Mindstorms and developed creative robotics and activities; now Mitch has gone beyond building robotics by creating a veritable inventors toolkit called Cricket (http://www.picocricket.com/) so support the same creative thinking, but in variable containers. This expands the range of combining art and technology.
Mitchel offered great examples of how to let kids use their imagination to create interesting things like a "wearable jukebox" that played different songs depending upon the
Froebel, the inventor of kindergarten, was a toy maker and developed a series of learning toys that are known as Froebel's gifts.
Another tool is called Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/) which just became available. It's a free programing environment that helps kids very quickly learn computer programming by stacking a very cleverly designed set of building blocks. Scratch is fully integrated with the web and makes it easy for kids to develop an understanding of programming by focusing on the thinking rather than the punctuation and syntax of programming, which at first, can be out of reach for many.
Get Scratch!
The most important learning happens when things don't work well and then you iterate the cycle of imagine, create, play, share, reflect, and imaging. Mitch and his team want kids to do the same thing: try something out, if it doesn't work, you think about it and try it again.
This will prepare kids for a world where creativity and problem solving will help kids be more successful and more content.
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