[em-bee]

as an observer from the sidelines (i was contributing to the OLPC development but never involved in any deployment) my guess is this: if there was a proper theoretical constructionist framework then it failed because of the resistance of the existing educational system.

in other words, a constructionist model may work in a situation where kids are left to themselves, but it may not work if there is a competing educational system that doesn't allow the kids to take advantage of the opportunities the constructionist model provides.

personally though i am skeptical that a pure constructionist approach will enable the children to achieve their maximum potential, and any successes of it are in comparison to a failing traditional model.

[DonHopkins]

There were many reasons the OLPC failed, but I don't think constructionist education was one of them, when it's succeeded in so many other places.

EA donated SimCity to OLPC because of its relation to constructionist education, thanks to Maxis's collaboration with Doreen Nelson, who wrote the SimCity teacher's guide, and developed "City Building Education" and "Design Based Learning", in which kids built cities out of cardboard instead of pixels:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20329281

>SimCity can be used educationally, but not in the sense of literally training people to be urban planners or mayors. It's more useful for "Constructionist Education" and "Design Based Learning", as practiced by Seymour Papert and Doreen Nelson.

>[...] One of the teachers Curtin hired was Doreen Nelson, a brilliant and innovative educator who had developed a pedagogy called City Building Education, in which students collaboratively built cities out of craft materials and role play. Nelson become a regular visitor to Maxis, and Curtin made some trips to Los Angeles to see City Building in action, where she found the experience of “watching a classroom actually go through a couple of days worth of creation” to be “very inspiring. … I will never forget that experience” (Curtin 2015; Nelson 2015). [5]

Chaim Gingold wrote a section about Doreen Nelson's work in his dissertation on "Play Design":

https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1806122688.html?FMT=AI

[DonHopkins]

Here's an unboxing video of the SimCity Classic "School Edition" Lab Pack, which includes the teacher's guide by Doreen Nelson and Michael Bremer:

LGR - SimCity Educational Version Unboxing & Overview

An overview of the "School Edition" Lab Pack of SimCity Classic by Maxis. Unboxing, first impressions of the package and testing of the radically rad software ensues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edXRNtuAGTga

LGR has done many other extensive reviews of SimCity, and here's his most recent retrospective:

SimCity 30 Years Later: A Retrospective (Feb 1, 2019)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrScy1icWjI

[ivanmilles]

Thanks for digging out the links on Doreen, pocketed both.

But am I reading GP wrong that it wasn't constructionist education proper that failed, but a "let's do things with laptops" being retconned onto constructivism?

[em-bee]

at the time i had the impression that not much thought was given on how to implement education using the laptops. looking at it now, i have the impression that the expectation was that the mere existence of the laptops would allow for constructionist education to happen all by itself.

i don't know enough about constructionist education to know what factors ought to be present, but i can't imagine that an education system and teachers that do not understand or do not want constructionist education aren't a problem.

i also believe that OLPC didn't sell constructionist education to the buyers, nor that the buyers wanted to start using constructionist education.

i have the impression that it was rather hoped that constructionist education would not only happen by itself but also undermine the existing education system in that it flourishes despite the existing system.

in the end the failure was that the expectations of parents, teachers and others in the education system were not met.

one might argue that the failure was to not educate the buyers on what to expect, but then i can't imagine that OLPC would have successfully sold anything if they had tried to sell constructionist education along with it.

[em-bee]

what i meant was not that constructionist education was a failure in itself but that it was rejected by the established education system.

[DonHopkins]

Ok, I understand you now!

It's not straightforward just how to apply those theories, and takes a lot of experimentation and adaptation. And getting the established education system to change is a Sisyphean task.

Instead of thinking of SimCity as a way of directly teaching urban planning, or financing, or building construction, you can use it to motivate and indirectly develop language, logical argument, and debating skills. You can ask students to write about their cities, by describing their aspirations, proposals, platforms, campaign promises, then promoting and defending and discussing the issues, then holding elections and voting for which plans to implement, then implementing them, then discussing and writing about how they turned out.