Constructivist Celebration @ NECC 2007

Last Sunday was a beautiful and inspiring day. Not just the glorius sunshine and natural beauty of the Atlanta Botanical gardens, but the intellectual stimulation for teachers attending the Constructivist Celebration @ NECC 2007.
The best known Constructivist teacher runs The Magic Schoolbus. "Make mistakes, get dirty, try!". Constructivist teachers are the ones on which other teachers comment, "Gets amazing results from all the kids. They just love to do the work in there and seem to learn so much!" In thirty-one years in public school teaching I NEVER saw as positive a response in learning as was elicited by LOGO. (One Special Ed kid exclaimed to me," I love LOGO. Even my mistakes are beautiful!" Kids explored and wondered fearlessly. The slow did amazing, satisfying art that inspired them to stretch their boundaries and try more; the already bright and adventurous soared in sharing their creations and helping the slower catch up. Old and young are on a common exploration and talk as equal comrades in arms. The sense of wonder and sharing hooked me and I have pushed for such programs, usually in futility.
Sunday Gary Stager did his usual job of revving up teachers to go challenge and change the world. Peter Reynolds of Fablevision talked of overcoming kids fear of failure by "The -ISh Concept". If you can't draw a circle, draw something circle-ish. All of these people talked of concerns for the education of kids other than in just their classroom, their school, their state, their country, they talked of inspiring learning and communicxation in the world the students WILL live in and inhabit. Lauren Elliott, who has already stimulated so much thinking with the Carmen Sandiego series, joined with Bob Barboza of SuperSchool University, talked about Kid's Talk Radio and the plan to get kids all over the world directly communicating by student created radio-shows. Using simple-to-use complex technology, the kids create how and what to say. We were all ready to go face down mandatory test teaching.
Demonstrations were made. We saw the latest LOGO Microworlds and the offerings from other companies using the same philosophy of encouraging kids to do and learn as they need so it sticks. I still get letters from college kids telling me how enjoyable Logo was in seventh grade and how the problem solving approach made it so easy to begin "thinking in" more complex computer languages they encountered. The whole suite of new programs by Tech4Learning extends this approach to encourage kids to write and draw and create web sites and slide shows to share their work.
Unlike other conferences, we were given all the new software we had heard about and were encouraged to create projects using the new stuff with experts available for advice and direction. Matt Merritt went to town with Microworlds and was impressing everone with his space themed pong game. The flowers of the Botanical Gardemns were photographed and used in clever and interesting ways.
Everyone was reluctant to leave and anxious to get back to trying to do more before the next day at NECC.