Lifelong Kindergarten

Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play

by Mitchel Resnick

Number of pages: 208

Publisher: The MIT Press

BBB Library: Education

ISBN: 978-0262037297



About the Author

Mitchel Resnick, an expert in educational technologies, is Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Lab. He has worked closely with the LEGO toy company for thirty years, collaborating with them on such innovative projects as the LEGO Mindstorms robotics kits, and he holds the LEGO endowed chair at MIT. He leads the team developing the Scratch programming software and online community, and he is cofounder of the Computer Clubhouse project, a network of after-school learning centers for youth from low-income communities.

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Editorial Review

In kindergartens these days, children spend more time with math worksheets and phonics flashcards than building blocks and finger paint. Kindergarten is becoming more like the rest of school. In this book, we argue for exactly the opposite: the rest of school (even the rest of life) should be more like kindergarten. To thrive in today's fast-changing world, people of all ages must learn to think and act creatively-and the best way to do that is by getting engaged in a Creative Learning Spiral, i.e. focusing more on imagining, creating, playing, sharing, and reflecting, just as children do in traditional kindergartens. The creative spiral is the engine of creative thinking.

Book Reviews

“This is the book I have been waiting for. Lifelong Kindergarten is filled with gems—thoughts about what learning in the 21st century needs to be like, brought to life through evocative and nuanced examples that fire up our own imaginations. Many of us have danced around this topic but no one has hit the bull's-eye like Mitch Resnick has done.” – John Seely BrownFormer Chief Scientist of Xerox and Director of Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)

“This is a recipe, not an algorithm, so there are many variations a professional could come up with, adjusting and adapting the mix as experience is built up over time. It’s a creative spiral after all.” – Miranda Net

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Wisdom to Share

Kindergarten is becoming more like the rest of school. In this book, we argue for exactly the opposite: the rest of school (even the rest of life) should be more like kindergarten.

The creative spiral is the engine of creative thinking.

We need to develop better technologies and strategies to engage children in creative learning activities.

We need to create more places for children to develop their creative capacities.

We need to provide children with more opportunities to tinker, with both physical and digital materials.

True tinkers know how to turn their initial explorations into a focused activity.

Computers cannot assess the creativity of a design, the beauty of a poem, or the ethics of an argument.

If your goal is to train someone to perform a specific task at a specific time, then gamification can be an effective strategy.

Gamification has become the conventional wisdom.

For a technology to be effective, is should provide easy ways for novices to get started (low floors) but also ways for them to work on increasingly sophisticated projects over time (high ceilings).