by A recent request from a doctoral student led me to find this 2013 paper I authored. Otherwise, it would have been forever lost in the dustbin of academia. You might find it interesting.
Papert’s Prison Fab Lab: Implications for the maker movement and education design
Abstract
For three years, the author collaborated with Seymour Papert in the planning, design, operation, teaching and documentation of the Constructionist Learning Laboratory at the Maine Youth Center. This work is significant as it represents Dr. Papert’s last institutional research project and marks his first attempt to design an educational environment based on the theory of constructionism from scratch. The implications for education reform and school reform are numerous. However, in the context of the 2013 Interaction Design and Children focus on DIY/maker culture, the overlooked work of the Constructionist Learning Laboratory the work of Papert, Stager and their colleagues is particularly pertinent. More than a decade before maker culture and “fab labs” emerged as a popular addition to formal education, Papert succeeded in creating a school built entirely upon the ideals of that movement.
Read the complete paper here.
Don’t miss the Tenth Annual Constructing Modern Knowledge institute, July 11-14, 2017. Click here for more information.
Veteran educator Gary Stager, Ph.D. is the author of Twenty Things to Do with a Computer – Forward 50, co-author of Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, publisher at Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, and the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. He led professional development in the world’s first 1:1 laptop schools thirty years ago and designed one of the oldest online graduate school programs. Gary is also the curator of The Seymour Papert archives at DailyPapert.com. Learn more about Gary here.