Associate Professor Marina Bers from the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development and the Computer Science Department at Tufts University visited Wellesley to give a talk on Tangible Kindergarten for Children. She emphasized the need for education to include a curriculum centered around robotics and engineering to insure that kids, who nowadays grow up surrounded by machines and advanced technology, learn and understand their interactive space. Because society has changed to an extent we often find ourselves depending so heavily on daily tools and gadgets we can't individually construct, it is essential that students are taught to at least understand the concepts behind the complicated manufacturing in our surrounding.
The interviews and video clips on the performance of children who experimented with the robotic kit were a fascinating testimony to how engineering can be an intuitive and natural part of learning. Kids, in the short period of 20 hours, were not only able to build and program robots but also integrate their new learning with their life stories. Computer science is no longer an extension from math and physics, but it rather becomes another fundamental study in life that will help people engage with the way their society is literally constructed. I was really impressed and even jealous of the length of exposure these children had to the world of technology that I am only beginning to understand. It almost seems now that such advancement in the education system is an inevitable part of change.
I am curious to know what more changes are being implemented in the kit to improve the transition between GUI and physical toys. I certainly do not want kids to be overpowered by computer screens. They should be taught to take control of their learning kits and learn to summarize the bigger picture of the tools they are exposed to.
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