By Seymour Papert (1999)
[Note: In 1999, Seymour Papert, the father of educational technology, embarked on his last ambitious institutional research project when he created the constructionist, technology-rich, project-based, multi-aged, interdisciplinary Constructionist Learning Lab inside Maine’s troubled prison for teens, The Maine Youth Center.
One morning, Papert arrived with this one-page handout intended to help visitors understand constructionism as a living, practical approach to creating an optimal learning environment. This document was first published in Gary Stager's PhD dissertation,
Stager, G. S. (2006). An Investigation of Constructionism in the Maine Youth Center The University of Melbourne]The First Big Idea: Learning by Doing
We all learn better when learning is part of doing something we find really interesting. We learn best of all when we use what we learn to make something we really want.
The Second Big Idea: Technology as Building Material
If you can use technology to make things, you can make a lot more interesting things. And you can learn a lot more by making them. This is especially true of digital technology: computers of all sorts, including the computer-controlled LEGO® in our Lab.
The Third Big Idea: Hard Fun
We learn best and we work best if we enjoy what we are doing. But fun and enjoyment don’t mean “easy.” The best fun is hard fun. Our sports heroes work very hard at getting better at their sports. The most successful carpenter enjoys doing carpentry. The successful businessperson enjoys working hard at making deals.The Fourth Big Idea: Learning to Learn
Many students get the idea that “the only way to learn is by being taught.” This is what makes them fail in school and in life. Nobody can teach you everything you need to know. You have to take charge of your own learning.
The Fifth Big Idea: Taking Time — The Proper Time for the Job
Many students at school get used to being told every five minutes or every hour: do this, then do that, now do the next thing. If someone isn’t telling them what to do, they get bored. Life is not like that. To do anything important, you have to learn to manage time for yourself. This is the hardest lesson for many of our students.
The Sixth Big Idea: You Can’t Get It Right Without Getting It Wrong
This is the biggest of all. Nothing important works the first time. The only way to get it right is to look carefully at what happened when it went wrong. To succeed, you need the freedom to goof on the way.
The Seventh Big Idea: Do Unto Ourselves What We Do Unto Our Students
We are learning all the time. We have a lot of experience with other similar projects, but each one is different. We do not have a preconceived idea of exactly how this will work out. We enjoy what we are doing, but we expect it to be hard. We expect to take the time we need to get this right. Every difficulty we run into is an opportunity to learn. The best lesson we can give our students is to let them see us struggle to learn.
The Eighth Big Idea: We Are Entering a Digital World
Knowing about digital technology is as important as reading and writing. So learning about computers is essential for our students’ futures, but the most important purpose is using them NOW to learn about everything else.