CREATIVITY BY DESIGN
To Learn - The Constructionist Perspective
Seymour Papert (1993) coined the terms constructionist versus instructionist to highlight that instead of simply embedding lesson plans in games and activities, we could encourage the students to actively create games and activities which could be shared, thereby leading to deeper understanding.
Constructionism (as defined for education) is the idea of learning by constructing things.
Click here for a four part article by Seymour Papert on Constructionism
Below is a brief list of Apps which allow for learning, the constructionist way.
Game Creator
The Game Creator is an App which enables the user to design their own themes, characters, obstacles, challenges and levels, compose music and interact with the opposite side.
Apart from stimulating student creativity through designing layouts, characters, and music, the App is extremely useful to teach critical thinking and problem solving as the user has to think through the strategies for designing the challenges and contemplate the moves that a player would make.
Meme Creator
The meme generator App helps users create their own customised memes from a host of different images from the library or from those the users upload.
Apart from being humorous, memes perform a very important task of highlighting a topic. Encouraging the students to create their own memes on everyday happenings around them could be a great way for teaching and learning Civics and Governance.
goReact
Rocket Science 101
GoReact acts like a virtual laboratory where the students can create their own reactions by combining various elements from the periodic table and test if the react and how. It also displays images and videos to illustrate the molecules that the user creates.
GoReact can be a great way to explore reactions and molecule formation which can create an interest and curiosity in Chemistry and a great deal of learning along the way.
Physics Sketchpad
The Physics Sketchpad is an App which offers the users an opportunity to create their own scenarios of motion and collision and thus better understand concepts of Physics.
Physics Sketchpad can be extremely effective in teaching different types of motions, velocity, density, momentum and the interrelationships between them and how they can be manipulated to achieve desired result.
Rocket Science 101 is an app from NASA which allows the users to create their own spacecraft and successfully test it by launching it in an orbit. The user could choose between various missions, rockets, and components.
This App could be highly beneficial for teaching concepts in Physics like thrust, gravity, critical velocity. Additionally, for those interested in Astrophysics, it can lead to a deeper understanding about rockets and their components.
Physics Gizmo
Physics Gizmo is an app which serves to measure various physical phenomenon like accelaration, velocity, time and distance while creating various scientific experiments.
Though this App does not implement a directly constructionist approach, it can be immensely useful in creating various Science projects, especially those related to motion. It comes handy in places where the lab instruments are costly and beyond the reach of the students.