A guide to help teachers and mentors teach the concpets of Computer Science and Physical Computing using the Moving Rainbow kits.
These kits are designed around the simple and powerful concept of Social Constructivism. We define Social Constructionism as the process of students working together to solve problems and create projects.
REsearch shows that Social Constructionism has many advantages over traditional lecutre-based learing. Students learn the most through direct experience of building things in groups and with their own hands through direct physical experience. Retention is much better then if they read a book about abstract concepts.
The second idea is to mix in the power of social learning.
When students can take these kits home, to their school and show their friends they
demonstrate the devices and then become teachers and mentors to their peers.
Learning is reinfoced by each act.
We are also opposed to the idea that you have to purchase a $100 to $200 kit to learn these concepts.
By keeping the price under $15 we think that we make these kits available to a much larger audience.
One of our biggest challenge is recurting mentors, especially women and minority mentors. If you have any suggestions on how we can imporve this, please let us know.
We also feel that learning basic "foundation" skills such as breadboarding is critical for future projects.
Purchasing a kit of propriatary connectors might be fun, but will limit future learing.