Eery semester, we hold workshops planned and managed by seminar students. On January 12, nine members of the 3rd year seminar divided into three teams and conducted a workshop for children (a report on the workshop can be found on the department blog here). When designing my own workshops, I am conscious of low floors, …
Low floors, high ceilings, wide walls are the principles of tool development espoused by Professor Mitchel Resinck and his colleagues in the Lifelong Kindergarten Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, where Scratch and Octostudio are being developed. They use the metaphor of a programming tool as a room. First, the threshold is low …
Low Floor, High Ceiling, Wide Walls: Principles for Effective Workshop Design Read More »
On September 24, a remote workshop was held at the Ehime General Education Center’s “Komadori Classroom,” an educational support classroom. This time, we challenged students to make computer-operated toys by combining programmable batteries, blocks, and craft materials. Each time, we get to watch the students’ activities closely through the remote and learn many things from …
On September 14th, for the first time in three and a half years, we held a face-to-face workshop at the Hamagin Space Science Center in Yokohama. I recall that the last time we held the workshop was with a face shield. This time, we used Octostudio, a programming tool for smartphones released in October 2023 …
On August 30, we held a workshop on making moving toys using programmable batteries at the Sinno Children’s Club (Minato-ku, Tokyo). It has been a year since we held our first remote workshop here last summer. Over the past year, we have gradually improved the equipment and materials used for the workshop, based on the …
On August 9, we held our third workshop on making moving toys using programmable batteries at an after-school day service in Kanazawa. The workshop was scheduled to start at 10:00 a.m., but when we connected remotely at 9:30 a.m., the work had already been completed. It seemed that some of the kids had already started …
Workshop at Kanazawa City After School Day Service on August 9th Read More »
On August 2, we participated in a workshop for children held at Panasonic Center Tokyo with members of the project subject “Creative Learning Design. It has been 3 years since I have attended a face-to-face workshop for children. It’s been a long time so far😅. This time, elementary school children will experience making light objects …
Workshop as a Learning Opportunity for All Participants Read More »
Adults are no match for children. I always feel this when I see children at workshops. Curiosity, concentration, and the ability to learn something. These are truly wonderful abilities that children are born with. There are a lot of things happening in the workshop. How did you find that?” and discoveries that we, as adults, …
Bringing workshops and facilitation into your daily life. Workshops and the facilitators who appear in them are somewhat extraordinary. Perhaps it is good that they are unusual, but since I am going through the trouble, I would like to incorporate them into my daily life. That’s all I’ve been thinking about lately. A life with …
Since my discharge from the hospital at the end of March, I have been teaching classes and seminars remotely while doing rehabilitation to get used to life in a wheelchair at home. A little over 20 years ago, I conducted a robot building workshop connecting children in Singapore and Japan using a videoconferencing system and …
