Teachers as Designers: Integrating Robotics in Early Childhood Education.

Abstract

This article presents a constructionist approach to introducing technology, in particular robotics, in the early childhood classroom. The authors demonstrate how this approach is well suited, since the four basic tenets of constructionism have a long-standing tradition in early childhood education: (a) learning by designing meaningful projects to share in the community, (b) using concrete objects to build and explore the world, (c) the identification of powerful ideas that are both personally and epistemologically significant, and (d) the importance of self-reflection as part of the learning process. This article introduces a methodology for teaching preservice teachers to integrate technology in the classroom. It also de-scribes four different experiences in which preservice teach-ers designed and integrated robotic projects done with LEGO Mindstorms and ROBOLAB to engage their young students in