Coming to See Action as Symbol: the Computer as Collaborator

Our work with young children began as a project and a place that we called The Laboratory for Making Things. Our hypothesis was that deep learning could accrue in an environment where projects were designed that used differing kinds of objects/materials, that utilized differing sensory modalities, t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Bamberger, Jeanne
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Music and Theater Arts Section
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Springer International Publishing 2021
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/131602.2
Description
Summary:Our work with young children began as a project and a place that we called The Laboratory for Making Things. Our hypothesis was that deep learning could accrue in an environment where projects were designed that used differing kinds of objects/materials, that utilized differing sensory modalities, that held the potential for differing modes of description, but that shared conceptual underpinnings. This article focuses on the work of one eight-year-child, whom I call Laf, whose most notable quality was integrity – he needed to understand for himself. I trace Laf’s work as an example of a response to the question I had put to myself: Could the computer be a collaborator in helping children effectively make moves between their own body actions in clapping and the necessary numerical–symbolic instructions to make the computer drums play what they had clapped?