Search for: All records

A 1971 memo by Papert and Solomon introduced twenty things to do with a computer which became the foundation for constructionism. In this paper, we propose bringing constructionist activities into making with living materials. Significant developments in tools and methods have turned biology into a design science: it is now possible to make things with biology—or biodesign— rather than just observing processes and behaviours. Our list of twenty things to make with biology includes examples from making colours, toys, games, insulin, batteries, sensors and more. In the discussion, we review how making with biology addresses key affordances of constructionist learning: “tinkerability,” the ability to experiment; “perceptibility,” the immediacy of feedback on learning process; “expressivity,” the personal customization of products; and “usability,” the ability to use learning designs in everyday contexts. We conclude with an overview of accessible and affordable tools available to K-12 education. 

Much attention has focused on designing tools and activities that support learners in designing fully finished and functional applications such as games, robots, or e-textiles to be shared with others. But helping students learn to debug their applications often takes on a surprisingly more instructionist stance by giving them checklists, teaching them strategies or providing them with test programs. The idea of designing bugs for learning—or debugging by design—makes learners again agents of their own learning and, more importantly, of making and solving mistakes. In this paper, we report on our first implementation of “debugging by design” activities in a classroom of 25 high school students over a period of eight hours as part of a longer e-textiles unit. Here students were asked to craft buggy circuits and code for their peers to solve. In this paper we introduce the design of the debugging by design unit and, drawing on observations and interviews with students and the teacher, address the following research questions: (1) What did students gain from designing and solving bugs for others? (2) How did this experience shape students’ completion of the e-textiles unit? In the discussion, we address how debugging by design contributes to students’ learning of debugging skills.