Abstract

Many new tools and mediations are at today’s children’s avail that we couldn’t dream of when we were growing up. At the same time, the millennium generation is also facing new challenges, which call for creative solutions. Today’s kids are growing up in a world increasingly shielded from nature; of ever more busy work and entertainment schedules; longer commutes; ‘disappearing’ third places; reorganizing neighborhoods; communities in transition; and recomposed families. And yet the children are extraordinarily resourceful. They invent their own surprising ways of navigating rough seas and seizing opportunities. Much can be learned from their genres of engagement. This chapter addresses six areas of change that inform how today’s kids play and learn, and, more generally, how they see themselves, relate to others, dwell in place, and treat things. Together, these areas offer a framework to rethink some of our own assumptions on what it means to be literate, knowledgeable, and creative, thus opening new venues for designers and educators to cater the native’s strengths while, at the same time, providing support for what they may be missing on, if left on their own.

If you want to know more, paper can be found and downloaded from Child Research Net, Japan a wonderful resource on the future of our children worldwide!

Yeah! The film is out! You can now hear the piano concert held on the first day of the conference (Paris, August 2010), as well as the 15 plenary speakers (of whom i am), 5 panels, and one of the dance events. These images bring back some good memories. Looking forward to Constructionism 2012 in Greece.

The film collection is divided in 3 parts: general, plenary talks, and panels, all of which have active links. I here focus on General includes welcome talk, Logo history interview, and piano concert. Plenary sessions include 15 talks, listed in alphabetic order (mine is the first).

You can directly listen to the talk by clicking the title below

Constructivism(s): Shared roots, crossed paths, multiple legacies

The Sens[e-Res]ponsive Architecture Workshop took place at the Department of Architecture at the Technical University of Crete in Chania, Greece. It was organized by Marianthi Liapi and Kostis Ougrinis, with the support from Maria Voyatzaki and Constantin Spiridonidis, and other colleagues and friends, from Greece and elsewhere. I was lucky enough to be invited, together with Susanne Seitinger, Peter Schmitt, and Kostas Terzidis, from Boston, and to be a part of what turned out to be an extraordinary adventure, in more than one way.

The idea of the workshop was to create intriguing and playful sens[e-Res]ponsive environments for young children. The scenarios addressed by 3 teams of students were:
1. Life-cycles: Create spatial configurations to help children understand the notions of 'time' and 'change,' through play.
2. Storytelling: Create spatial configurations to help children develop their narrative and memory skills, through play.
3. Traces: Create spatial configurations to help children understand their own, and other children's "presence" from the traces of their movement in space, through play.

Besides its interest for architects and interaction designers, the workshop struck me as an extraordinary educational achievement in its own right. Facilitated by a selected team of "instructors" (from Harvard, MIT, TU Delft, University of East London, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and Technical University of Crete), the structure proposed put a healthy demand (i said healthy. not heavy : ) on all of us to bring in our insights / expertise / questionings at the right time, upon demand, and at the right "level of granularity", in order to help evolve the projects. We were guides on the side more than sages on a stage, sometimes midwifes (or coaches) and sometimes students ourselves, without a fixed hierarchy, always in the flow! We were more like a samba school than a regular classroom or a design studio: all in it together, little time till carnival, lots of good energy, hours of hard work by the students and organizers, and sometimes, a well-deserved moment to rest.....



This has been an extraordinary 10 days, both work and otherwise! Calls for more!

For more information, please visit the official site
You may also check out a video that Marianthi and Kostis just posted on you tube
And for your amusement, enjoy Kostas Terzidis' very cool video clip.

I stumbled upon this gem by Michael Zoellner on Facebook. The piece is called: My Dog Light Writing “Makers”. Brilliant!

Michael writes:" Mounting 5 LEDs on a moving object creates one of the cheapest and largest displays: Persistence of Vision. It’s been done on bicycle wheels, fans and other rotating objects.
In this project i am sewing a Lilypad wearable Arduino board and five LEDs with conductive thread on my dog’s shirt. She (Ianto) is a Miniature Pinscher running very fast for fun. In curves fast enough for Persitence of Vision. And she likes running in large circles in the park! Light writing".



"I chose Cory Doctorow's “Makers” for her writing with light. It’s one of the most influential books i read in the last years. A book about our generation of Makers set some month / years in the future. And Cory released it under Creative Commons license. Thus anyone can remix it".

Check out Michael's blog: and Cory Doctorow's novel

Sherry is both an accomplice and an inspiration. She has been studying our changing relationships with digital culture for over three decades, charting how mobile technology, social networking, and sociable robotics are changing our work, families, and identity. Her latest book "Together alone" marks a turning point in Sherry's thinking.

After "La France Freudienne", "The second self", "Life on the screen", Sherry is now looking back and taking her deepest dive ever! She is helping us rethink how today's digital technologies have become the architecture of our intimacies. In her words: Thirty years ago we asked what we would use computers for. Now the question is what don’t we use them for. Now, through technology, we create, navigate, and perform our emotional lives. In her introduction, Sherry further writes: "Drawn by the illusion of companionship without the demands of intimacy, we conduct “risk free” affairs on Second Life and confuse the scattershot postings on a Facebook wall with authentic communication. And now, we are promised “sociable robots” that will marry companionship with convenience".

and she goes on...

"Technology promises to let us do anything from anywhere with anyone. But it also drains us as we try to do everything everywhere. We begin to feel overwhelmed and depleted by the lives technology makes possible. We may be free to work from anywhere, but we are also prone to being lonely everywhere. In a surprising twist, relentless connection leads to a new solitude. We turn to new technology to fill the void,but as technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down".

I particularly enjoyed Sherry talking about her book to fellow pychologists at the Psychotherapy Networker Symposium, 2011 . Check out the video: . You can skip intro (lasts 4 minutes)

Manifesto - Stop and ask questions (...) Stop and ask yourself. Quo Vadis?

Quotevadis is the coolest site on identity, time, place, growth, and evolution. More than just quotes. Here go some of my favorites: “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable” (John Kenneth Galbraith); “Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people” (Thomas Lansing Masson); “You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists” (Abbie Hoffman); “Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law” (A law forumlated by Douglas Hofstadter in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach); “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources” (Albert Einstein); “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time” (Bertrand Russell); "After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say ‘I want to see the manager.’” (William S. Burroughs)
and the last, by George Bernard Shaw, Irish playright...


Want to see more? Check out the Website:

Paper published in "Constructivist Foundations". Volume 6. Number 2. March 2011. A Commemorative Issue for Ernst v. Glasersfeld (Hugh Gash and Alexander Riegler, Editors).
With Pre- and Postfaces by EA and Comments by Vincent Kenny and George Forman.

Both authors of this essay had the good fortune to grow up with more than one language: Edith Ackermann (EA) with German and French, and Ernst von Glasersfeld (EvG) with German, English, and Italian. An early multilingual background profoundly influences a person’s insights into how words are made to mean: first and foremost in the acquisition of language; later in the conception of knowledge and ideas of how we gain it. Living in more than one language leads sooner or later to the realization that the concept designated by a word of one language hardly ever matches that designated by the word given as equivalent in a bilingual dictionary.

There are few instances where there seems to be inter-lingual synonymy. Simple English words such as “screwdriver” or “corkscrew” may look like cases in point. Both are technical terms for commonly used tools, and the uses of the tools are identical, whether you live in Germany or Ireland. Even so, there are subtle differences. Metaphorically speaking, the English “screwdriver” drives the screw in and out, while the German Schraubenzieher draws it out. Likewise, the English “corkscrew” screws itself into the cork (and then back out again),
whereas the German “Kork- or Stöpselzieher” and the French “tire-bouchon” pull the cork out (with no mention of how the “puller” got into the cork in the first place). What seems to matter instead is: get that cork out so the wine can flow! The meanings of these words may be compatible in the sense that they all fit the situations in which they are used (in this case opening a bottle) but their conceptual structure is not the same. Each specifies aspects of the instrumental act, which are omitted by its “equivalent” in another language.

An attempt to translate any word into another language inevitably leads you to see details of meaning that the ordinary speaker of the language may be unaware of. “Experience,” the word we are mainly concerned with in this essay, is a prime example....

To read more, Paper Experience ernst and EA

For more information about the journal " Constructivist foundations" see website

In this paper, I examine the shared roots and crossed paths between Jean Piaget’s constructivism, what Seymour Paper refers to as “constructionism”, and socio-cultural theories as epitomized by Lev Vygotsky. I do so in the light of more situated, pragmatic, and ecological approaches to human cognition. While similar in many respects, the views also differ in significant ways, each highlighting some aspects of how children grow and learn, while leaving other questions unanswered. To read more, go to EA—Constructionism 2010

Keywords: Constructivism, Piaget, Papert, Vygotsky, situated learning, embodied cognition, ecology of mind

Note: An earlier version of this paper appears in Ackermann. E. (2004) Constructing knowledge and transforming the world. In A learning zone of one's own: Sharing representations and flow in collaborative learning environments [M. Tokoro and L.Steels (Eds.). Amsterdam, Berlin, Oxford, Tokyo, Washington, DC. IOS Press. pp. 15-37.

The Fed reprinted US dollar bills. Research however shows that when in a panic, the 'american people' spend even more, and stop to think altogether (just kidding). That's at least what the politicians wish — and the media encourage!

Danah Boyd have written numerous posts about social media, social software, social networks and other relevant topics related to the lives and interests of "digital natives". Each and everyone is worth reading. Good thing Danah has decided to put together a “best of” to highlight essays that, in her view, are most interesting to newcomers interested in social media. Recent essays and blog posts include:
- Sociality is Learning – November 30, 2009
- is Facebook for old people? – May 18, 2009
- Living and Learning with Social Media – April 18, 2009
- Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies – December 31, 2008
- reflections on Lori Drew, bullying, and solutions to helping kids – November 30, 2008
- teens, dating, friendship, and school dances – October 5, 2008
- Teen Socialization Practices in Networked Publics – April 23, 2008
- how youth find privacy in interstitial spaces – March 9, 2008
- Just The Facts About Online Youth Victimization – May 11, 2007

This is an unique resource to anyone interested in the lives of today's children and youth!

Check out the blog :)