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Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2000
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Off the Beaten Track
Thinking Outside the Sandbox
Innovative teachers in northern
Italy are integrating technology into classroom life
By MARTIN PENNER Reggio Emilia
In
the La Villetta nursery school in the northern Italian city of
Reggio Emilia a dead tree branch is planted next to a tall,
leafy oleander. The branch broke off a tree in the yard after
a heavy snowfall, and the children were so sad at its demise
that they decided to give it a new life. Both plants are now
connected by a nest of wires, sprouting sensors and a string
of led lights. When the sun shines on the living plant, the
leaves send an electronic message to the dead branch, which
responds by spinning an array of paper fans to beat the heat.
Stroke one of the paper leaves attached to the branch and the
string of red led lights begins to flash as if to say, "Hey,
I'm alive."
This odd mix of biology and technology is
an example of how teachers in Reggio Emilia — long famous for
their innovative approaches to early childhood education —
integrate computers into the classroom. Their approach is
based on a simple observation: because computers are an
integral part of the world children grow up in, they should be
an integral part of their education, too.
But this
doesn't mean a separate computer room where kids go to play
games, send e-mails and surf the Web. In Reggio, every class
has an atelier, a room where children can find all the tools
an artist might need: paints, paper, pens, clay, wire, a
camera ... and a computer. "For us the computer is not a
discipline or even simply an instrument," says Paola Cagliari,
a child education expert at Reggio city hall. "It represents a
way of thinking and is one of the many languages that children
can use to express their creativity."
The
plant/computer hybrid was developed by a group of five- and
six-year-olds using MindStorms, a set of programmable bricks
from the Danish toymaker Lego. The actual programming was done
by teachers, but every step in the complicated process of
devising how the system would work was decided by the
children. The computerized kits were originally designed for
kids aged 12 and up, but Reggio's schools are participating in
an E.U. research project to see whether they can be useful for
smaller children too. The project — Constructing with Atoms
and Bits (CAB) — will close next February after two years of
classroom tests. Teachers will then suggest ways to adapt the
toys for the younger age group.
Reggio's instructors
are already convinced that the technology can be put to good
use in the hands of five- to-six-year-olds. "The kits enable
the children to give shape to their ideas," says Maura
Rovacchi, a teacher who oversees the use of the kits at
another of Reggio's nursery schools. "Kids get used to
reasoning over the possibilities and controlling the direction
of the projects they undertake."
The children use
another Lego product, RoboSport, to build simple robots
programmed with basic behavior patterns. This type of play
gives young kids insights into things like self-discipline and
empathy. "Working with robots means teaching their creations
how to behave," explains Paola Barchi, a teacher at La
Villetta. "This means the children have to put themselves in
the shoes of their pupil, a huge step psychologically."
The Reggio teachers are hoping to make the Lego
software simpler and the interface more intuitive so that
children as young as four or five can do the programming
themselves. "We are working on an interface using icons and
words that represent basic actions — such as flashing lights
and turning left — that can be dragged onto an image of the
programmable brick," says Augusto Chioccariello of the
Genoa-based Institute for Didactic Technology, a key
participant in the CAB project.
Another of the
project's goals is to discover how children accumulate
knowledge and skills as they interact with the computerized
toys. Following the principle of learning by doing, Reggio
teachers encourage children to work out the systems and
procedures largely on their own. "This means the concrete
results are slower in coming," says Giovanni Piazza, a La
Villetta instructor, "but the knowledge the children
accumulate with these kits is built up bit by bit, just like
the objects they are constructing."
Just as important
as the technical knowledge the kids pick up are the strategies
they develop for problem solving. "The children bring into
play imagining, designing, expressing ideas, taking on board
other ideas, testing theories, looking for solutions," says
Barchi. "They develop a relaxed and positive relationship with
technology." As technology becomes more and more integrated
into our daily lives, that's something we all will need a lot
more of in the future.
Check out timeeurope.com for more
Fast Forward Europe stories in the days and weeks to come. Our
Fast Forward coverage culminates in a year-end special issue
and website to be published on December 14
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