According to the MIT Media Lab's Mitchel Resnick, classrooms don't need computers as much as they need to be decentralized.
Mitchel Resnick is a rising star at the MIT Media Lab. His goal: inventing technologies that radically change how and what kids learn, fostering "decentralized thinkers" who are comfortable with bottom-up interactions, not top-down control. A former Business Week writer, Resnick, 41, switched careers to earn an MIT PhD under computer education pioneer Seymour Papert. He adapted Papert's Logo computer language for use with Lego toys. Later, he created StarLogo, which lets kids build complex systems like anthills and bird flocks. His new book is Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams (MIT Press).
Wired: What's decentralized thinking?
Resnick: In a decentralized system, lots of simple parts interact with one another in simple ways, with no single part in charge - birds in aflock, cars on a highway, buyers and sellers in a market economy. Most people resist this idea. When they see patterns in the world, they assume centralized control where it doesn't exist. I try to help people develop better intuitions about decentralized systems, so they can better understand the workings of the world - and better create new worlds.
Why is this kind of thinking so important?
Corporate structures, scientific theories, computer architectures, political and economic models are all becoming more decentralized. And the Internet is accelerating this trend. If today's kids want to succeed in tomorrow's world, they need an appreciation for decentralized approaches. Whether they end up creating organizations, technologies, communities, or theories, they'll need to think this way.
How can we prepare children for this?
Just showing decentralized systems to kids isn't good enough. People see bird flocks all the time, but still assume the bird in front leads and the others follow, which isn't the case. To understand decentralized systems, children need opportunities to design, create, play with, and explore decentralized systems. StarLogo software lets kids do that. For instance, students use StarLogo (www.media.mit.edu/~starlogo/) to create a flock of artificial birds on the computer. The kids write simple rules for each bird - telling each how to interact with neighboring birds. Then they observe patterns that form when they let loose hundreds of the birds. Kids have used StarLogo to create termite colonies, traffic jams, market economies. They learn that organized patterns can arise from a few simple, local rules. You don't need a leader.
Will computers in the classroom help?
When schools introduce computers, they usually perpetuate traditional ways of teaching and learning. What we need to do is rethink the process of learning in a way that's suited to the digital age. The traditional approach of the teacher who transmits information to the learner is very centralized. We need to find ways for learners to take more responsibility for their own learning. It's wrong for educators to think they can totally control how and what someone is going to learn. That doesn't mean leaving kids on their own. It's more like tending the soil so good plants will grow, less like building a product.
Nice theory. How does that work in real life?
We've started an after-school learning center in inner-city Boston called the Computer Clubhouse (www.tcm.org/clubhouse/). We let kids explore their interests, with support from adult mentors, and we've seen group projects organize on their own. One team wanted to create a laser light show. Some of the children worked on the computer program, some worked on the mechanism for the laser light, others on the math of the patterns the laser might draw. There was lots of support, but it wasn't preplanned. We want to give kids enough freedom so they can explore their own fantasies, but we also want to give them enough support to help make their fantasies come true.
I can imagine some critics saying, "Our schools have bigger problems with basic reading, writing, and math."
When people see that schools aren't performing well, often their first inclination is to go back to basics. But the best learning situations aren't where you're drilling some facts into the learner. The most obvious example is the way children learn to talk. No one is drilling them on conjugating their verbs. They live in an environment where communication is important to them. I remember one Clubhouse kid who was creating a Director animation. To make objects meet at exactly the right time, he had to do some calculations about relative speed. He said that when he was learning about speed and time and distance in school, it didn't matter to him. So he never really learned the stuff. Now he wanted to learn it because he wanted to create this animation.
In promoting new ways to teach and learn, you're bucking one of the most centralized systems there is.
There are huge barriers in the education system. But we're seeing the beginnings of people recognizing there's a need for deep change. The same way that people have grown to understand the importance of diversity in an ecological system, we need to understand the importance of diversity in educational systems.
You believe the Internet is accelerating these changes.
The most profound effect of the Internet might not be in any of the content or information or people that we can get access to. What's most important is that it provides a new metaphor of decentralization, a model that we can apply to the way we think about many other things in the world.
