Playful+Inventors+Workshop

= = = = = = = = =Playful Inventor's Workshop for Educators= August 5, 2010 :: Session M :: Room G135toc
 * Brian C. Smith, Tadge O'Brien & Cindy Zauski**

Experience an inventors workshop within a classroom setting. Explore, experiment, design and build inventive creations using PicoCrickets, arts and crafts materials, and music. Build your understanding and skills of a constructivist approach to learning. Participants will design and build a creative project that interacts with its environment, gain hands-on experience with motors, learn to program a computer and leave with increased confidence using and creating with technology.
 * Description**

**What is the Playful Inventor's Workshop?**
This workshop is adapted from the Playful Invention Company's PicoCricket Workshops for inventing with art and technology. Our goal is to engage participants in exploring, experimenting, designing and creating. Our space is set up in the spirit of an artist's studio or inventor's workshop, with art supplies, LEGO bricks, glue sticks, and other craft materials. We choose a theme that provides participants with a common focus, but also inspires a wide diversity of projects. As participants work on projects, they shift back and forth between building, programming, and sharing ideas with one another.

Constructionist Learning
8 Big Ideas Behind the Constructionist Learning Lab, adapted from Dr. Seymour Papert and Dr. Gary Stager's work.
 * 1) We **learn by doing**
 * 2) **Technology is a building materia**l, make interesting things
 * 3) The best fun is **hard fun**
 * 4) Need to **learn to learn**
 * 5) **Take the time**, the proper time for a job - learning is iterative
 * 6) **You can't get it right until you get it wrong**, nothing important works the first time.
 * 7) **Do unto others what we do unto ourselves**. - The Golden Rule
 * 8) **Learn technically,** it's most important to use computers now to learn everything else.

The following guidelines are adapted from other Playful Inventor's, Lego workshops and constructivist classrooms in general:
 * Guidelines**

• Failure is not an option. • You will succeed if you work together, flex your creative muscles and are persistent. • Please be careful not to lose LEGO pieces. • Save your work OFTEN! • More time will probably be spent constructing with LEGO than programming. • Store your construction and materials in a safe place so that they don’t fall prey to an accident or espionage • Ask for help! Instructors and other participants can answer questions and provide a sounding board for the exploration of new ideas. • No whining. :) • Have fun!

**Guided Design**
During the guided design portion of the workshop, participants will use the provided placemats, booklets or other resources that will guide them through building, programming and customizing their creations. While this is a creative workshop, it is perfectly fine to follow along with the placemat.

**Designing for Interactivity**
Using the creations that participants made during the Guided Design activity, their challenge is to add interactivity between their creations. For instance, Group A will play with their creation so that it will interact, in some desired way, with Group B's creation.

**Showcase of Learning**
During this activity, participants (groups are okay) will share their creations, demonstrate what it does (or is supposed to do), how they would improve it (given time) and personal learning experienced through the workshop. This is very informal and questions can be asked by all.

**Reflection**

 * What types of learning did you experience through playful invention?
 * In what ways does these types of activities build a community of learners?
 * How do we create meaningful learning experiences with limited time for learning?
 * What content areas do you feel are represented? What evidence can you share? What content areas are missing?

**Resources﻿**
Below is a variety of online or "print" resources that you can use to learn more about PicoCrickets and playful learning.

Playful Inventor's Wiki - http://playfulinventors.wikispaces.com Playful Invention Company - www.picocricket.com YouTube search: picocricket GA Tech PICO Cricket Resources
 * Websites**

Food for Thought: PicoCrickets Disappoint Parents This article is a critique of the PicoCricket as a toy for home. Obviously, we disagree with this critique, but we've included it to offer a different perspective and to provide material for discussion. //Why might you agree/disagree with this critique?//
 * Articles**




 * Research**