Professional Learning for Busy Educators

"One of the great innovations in education was the concept of the play-based early-childhood education, or kindergarten, developed by Friedrich Fröbel in the 19th century. For centuries we have accepted a model of playful exploration in the early years, a model that gradually shifts, in the elementary years, to a more desk-bound approach, in which the teacher provides information and students demonstrate that they have understood that information. This works for some kids, but for others, it’s, well, stultifying. School becomes something to be endured rather than enjoyed.


But what if schooling in the upper elementary grades, or even high school, didn’t turn into an exercise in rote memorization, or fact regurgitation, or testing and achievement metrics? That’s the premise of Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity Through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play, a new book by Mitchel Resnick, the LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Lab."