Week 4

1. In this week…

“Constructionism” is connected to agent-based modeling, computational thinking, and education. The video for this week will introduce you to how constructionism is crucial to games and learning and present a programming activity to try out. The activity will engage you with a model in Toolblox to simulate the spread of a contagious disease and allow you to program your own extension to the model.

Constructionism Video [ ZIP, 66 MB, 540 p ]
Constructionism Video Slides [ PDF ]
Constructionism Video Transcript [ PDF ]

Constructionism article by Kafai [ PDF ]
Epidemic Model Programming Tutorial [ PDF ]


2. Constructionism

Wendy Huang and Daniel Wendel present constructionism in education. It includes a demonstration of how to use Toolblox to program an epidemic model.

Transcript [ PDF ]


3. Assignment

Read

Read the article “Constructionism by Kafai. 

  • How would you convince a teacher that constructionism is important for teaching and learning?
  • What examples would you give?

Create

Program an Epidemic model in Toolblox by following the directions on the epidemic programming tutorial . Then choose or invent one extension to program.

  • Write a reflection about the programming activity.