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Jean Piaget and the Child’s Spontaneous Geometry

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Re: Jean Piaget and the Child’s Spontaneous Geometry

#11

Post by baldfat »

goldenkey wrote: post #10
baldfat wrote: post #9

I work with 3 to 5 year old children, all bellow the poverty line, working with STEM and early literacy learning. This was a great article just due to the frustration I see of my students literacy programs we spend thousands of dollars on. They think all children can just see and learn letters without going to the foundations of shapes and distinguish sounds. I can't tell you how many children have difficulty with st…

I'm sure if you had some way to app-ize your ideas or generate a return on investment, many people here would back you. (Shouldn't need to be said, but I do feel expedient education of our youth is endlessly valuable despite where it might sit in the capitalistic cabal)

> generate a return on investment

Right now there are two models

A) Web based with ads (Most children activities and games online)

B) Subscription Model (ABC Mouse, iStation)

I would love to figure out another model

Re: Jean Piaget and the Child’s Spontaneous Geometry

#12

Post by mkempe »

baldfat wrote: post #9

I work with 3 to 5 year old children, all bellow the poverty line, working with STEM and early literacy learning. This was a great article just due to the frustration I see of my students literacy programs we spend thousands of dollars on. They think all children can just see and learn letters without going to the foundations of shapes and distinguish sounds. I can't tell you how many children have difficulty with st…

Have you looked at Maria Montessori's pedagogy? my daughters both learned to write cursive, starting at age 2 with tracing activities (geometrical inset/outset, sandpaper letters, etc.). Having watched them interact with apps on the iPad, I think the sensorial and perceptual presence of the learning materials is very important -- apps are not a sufficient substitute.

Re: Jean Piaget and the Child’s Spontaneous Geometry

#13

Post by zxcb1 »

gumby wrote: post #8
Singletoned wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it was. So it's like how the order in which we learn philosophical ideas roughly mirrors the order in which they were discovered?

That was Herbert Spencer’s Belief, yes, as he had a rather reductio “Gadgrind” view of knowledge and worth (he is also the originator of the phrase “social darwinism” and, amusingly, is buried across from his rival Karl Marx. This simplistic view is pretty much dead these days.

I am still a bit confused, am I interpreting this correctly? From an individual perspective, embodied tacit knowledge precedes conceptualized knowledge. In this example the process of drawing refines the spatial skills / cognition required to grasp Euclidean geometry. And the process of cultural knowledge progression does not necessarily follow this developmental order?

Re: Jean Piaget and the Child’s Spontaneous Geometry

#14

Post by gumby »

zxcb1 wrote: post #13
gumby wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was Herbert Spencer’s Belief, yes, as he had a rather reductio “Gadgrind” view of knowledge and worth (he is also the originator of the phrase “social darwinism” and, amusingly, is buried across from his rival Karl Marx. This simplistic view is pretty much dead these days.

I am still a bit confused, am I interpreting this correctly? From an individual perspective, embodied tacit knowledge precedes conceptualized knowledge. In this example the process of drawing refines the spatial skills / cognition required to grasp Euclidean geometry. And the process of cultural knowledge progression does not necessarily follow this developmental order?

Up to “and the process” yes, this is what Piaget taught. And that learning is a process of comtinuous rewriting of what you think you know, based on your experiences.

Separately: some people, like Spencer, who believe that “progress” has a direction, that “more advanced” societies have more universal knowledge that accumulates like stacking paper on a table, (and this was the challenge of Darwin) that humans are closest to god and all other creatures are inferior (you can see how this extends to a belief that there are different races (=breeds) of humans, both in genetics/god’s engineering and in culture).

Then tying the two together: you can look at the development of an individual human as an iterative, never ending and somewhat meandering process or you can say that you just have to transfer those stacks of paper, bottom to top, and then you’re done.

The connection between the two may sound absurdly tenuous but sad to say it is highly politicized and to this very day affects how schools are organized and funded, culture, politics, beliefs about right and wrong and how people should behave.

Re: Jean Piaget and the Child’s Spontaneous Geometry

#15

Post by jerf »

mkempe wrote: post #12
baldfat wrote: post #9

I work with 3 to 5 year old children, all bellow the poverty line, working with STEM and early literacy learning. This was a great article just due to the frustration I see of my students literacy programs we spend thousands of dollars on. They think all children can just see and learn letters without going to the foundations of shapes and distinguish sounds. I can't tell you how many children have difficulty with st…

Have you looked at Maria Montessori's pedagogy? my daughters both learned to write cursive, starting at age 2 with tracing activities (geometrical inset/outset, sandpaper letters, etc.). Having watched them interact with apps on the iPad, I think the sensorial and perceptual presence of the learning materials is very important -- apps are not a sufficient substitute.

"I think the sensorial and perceptual presence of the learning materials is very important -- apps are not a sufficient substitute."

I have wondered if a custom touchscreen setup could be designed to make this easier. The problem seems to me not to be something intrinsically "wrong" with screens, but that the touchscreens are too smooth if you use them with some sort of stylus, and to have too much difference between static and dynamic friction if you use your finger directly on the screen. As an adult, my handwriting gets noticeably worse on a touchscreen with a stylus, and only marginally better than my third-grader's writing when using my finger. It seems like if someone put their mind to it, a touchscreen+stylus combo could be created that would be very similar to pencil-on-paper in feel. It's even possible this could be done with a stylus and a generic overlay that could be put on any existing touchscreen (albeit possibly limited to higher quality capacitive screens).

The disadvantage is that this overlay will probably render the underlying touch screen no longer pleasant to use with a finger, and you probably want a semi-permanent adhesion so it's not going to be a thing you can easily take on and put off. (It could be experimented with but I bet it doesn't work out very well.) But still, an off-the-shelf tablet + $20 (at scale) in stylus + overlay might be able to mitigate and/or eliminate the sensory issues, while retaining the advantages that an app can bring, instant feedback primarily.

(In my opinion, the biggest thing that computers can bring to education is instant feedback, which can be mathematically shown to improve the maximum possible learning rate, and any attempt to bring computers into education that don't involve harnessing this are starting at a severe disadvantage.)

Re: Jean Piaget and the Child’s Spontaneous Geometry

#16

Post by baldfat »

mkempe wrote: post #12
baldfat wrote: post #9

I work with 3 to 5 year old children, all bellow the poverty line, working with STEM and early literacy learning. This was a great article just due to the frustration I see of my students literacy programs we spend thousands of dollars on. They think all children can just see and learn letters without going to the foundations of shapes and distinguish sounds. I can't tell you how many children have difficulty with st…

Have you looked at Maria Montessori's pedagogy? my daughters both learned to write cursive, starting at age 2 with tracing activities (geometrical inset/outset, sandpaper letters, etc.). Having watched them interact with apps on the iPad, I think the sensorial and perceptual presence of the learning materials is very important -- apps are not a sufficient substitute.

I work with Head Start in the US. We also use the same materials and they really are great. The issue I am running into is how to be cutting edge with STEM and be developmentally appropriate with activities. The vast majority of apps are just glorified worksheets and worksheets don't work. When you do a 1 for 1 real-life to digital-life examples the real-life works better 100%. If I want to show cause and effect nothing works better than dominions.

Re: Jean Piaget and the Child’s Spontaneous Geometry

#17

Post by zxcb1 »

gumby wrote: post #14
zxcb1 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am still a bit confused, am I interpreting this correctly? From an individual perspective, embodied tacit knowledge precedes conceptualized knowledge. In this example the process of drawing refines the spatial skills / cognition required to grasp Euclidean geometry. And the process of cultural knowledge progression does not necessarily follow this developmental order?

Up to “and the process” yes, this is what Piaget taught. And that learning is a process of comtinuous rewriting of what you think you know, based on your experiences. Separately: some people, like Spencer, who believe that “progress” has a direction, that “more advanced” societies have more universal knowledge that accumulates like stacking paper on a table, (and this was the challenge of Darwin) that humans are clos…

Ok, thanks! It seems to me that these aren’t mutually exclusive, rather complementary. The embodied approach, reminds me of the Montessori attitude of exploration / discovery and the metaphor of stacked paper, the industrial age, man as machine. How about seeing it as the difference between cultivating (complex, holistic, iterative, like ANNs) vs constructing (simple, compositional) or the principles of intuition and logic? Also, I suppose one may move in the other direction, from higher level conceptual to embodied understanding via iterative refinement.

Re: Jean Piaget and the Child’s Spontaneous Geometry

#18

Post by xrd »

My favorite introduction to Piaget was the book Mindstorms, about Seymour Papert and the development of logo at MIT. I'm interested in anyone on this thread contributing more to my reading list. Some of the references in that article are very esoteric to me.

Re: Jean Piaget and the Child’s Spontaneous Geometry

#19

Post by xrd »

baldfat wrote: post #9

I work with 3 to 5 year old children, all bellow the poverty line, working with STEM and early literacy learning. This was a great article just due to the frustration I see of my students literacy programs we spend thousands of dollars on. They think all children can just see and learn letters without going to the foundations of shapes and distinguish sounds. I can't tell you how many children have difficulty with st…

Any favorite books you have read that contributed to a better understanding of your work?

Re: Jean Piaget and the Child’s Spontaneous Geometry

#20

Post by baldfat »

xrd wrote: post #19
baldfat wrote: post #9

I work with 3 to 5 year old children, all bellow the poverty line, working with STEM and early literacy learning. This was a great article just due to the frustration I see of my students literacy programs we spend thousands of dollars on. They think all children can just see and learn letters without going to the foundations of shapes and distinguish sounds. I can't tell you how many children have difficulty with st…

Any favorite books you have read that contributed to a better understanding of your work?

Sadly I am the only STEM Lab Coach in the nation for 3 to 5-year-olds, that I know of. So I kind of had to invent my own position which thankfully has been supported by local Fortune 500 Companies in the community.

I read a lot from our curriculum "Creative Curriculum", accreditation standards and philosophy and my old Developmental Psychology classes. Lots of Academic research and many online resources like the Fred Rodgers Institute (http://www.fredrogerscenter.org/).

The only book I found to be helpful has been "Instructional Technology in Early Childhood: Teaching in the Digital Age." Most books are either surface level practical (I really enjoy the philosophy piece which is usually missing) or outdated and not very valuable.

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