In the La Villetta nursery school in the northern Italian city of Reggio Emilia a dead tree branch is planted next to a tall, leafy oleander. The branch broke off a tree in the yard after a heavy snowfall, and the children were so sad at its demise that they decided to give it a new life. Both plants are now connected by a nest of wires, sprouting sensors and a string of led lights. When the sun shines on the living plant, the leaves send an electronic message to the dead branch, which responds by spinning an array of paper fans to beat the heat. Stroke one of the paper leaves attached to the branch and the string of red led lights begins to flash as if to say, "Hey, I'm alive."
This odd mix of biology and technology is an example of how teachers in Reggio Emilia — long famous for their innovative approaches to early childhood education — integrate computers into the classroom. Their approach is based on a simple observation: because computers are an integral part of the world children grow up in, they should be an integral part of their education, too.
But this doesn't mean a separate computer room where kids go to play games, send e-mails and surf the Web. In Reggio, every class has an atelier, a room where children can find all the tools an artist might need: paints, paper, pens, clay, wire, a camera ... and a computer. "For us the computer is not a discipline or even simply an instrument," says Paola Cagliari, a child education expert at Reggio city hall. "It represents a way of thinking and is one of the many languages that children can use to express their creativity."
The plant/computer hybrid was developed by a group of five- and six-year-olds using MindStorms, a set of programmable bricks from the Danish toymaker Lego. The actual programming was done by teachers, but every step in the complicated process of devising how the system would work was decided by the children. The computerized kits were originally designed for kids aged 12 and up, but Reggio's schools are participating in an E.U. research project to see whether they can be useful for smaller children too. The project — Constructing with Atoms and Bits (CAB) — will close next February after two years of classroom tests. Teachers will then suggest ways to adapt the toys for the younger age group.
Reggio's instructors are already convinced that the technology can be put to good use in the hands of five- to-six-year-olds. "The kits enable the children to give shape to their ideas," says Maura Rovacchi, a teacher who oversees the use of the kits at another of Reggio's nursery schools. "Kids get used to reasoning over the possibilities and controlling the direction of the projects they undertake."
The children use another Lego product, RoboSport, to build simple robots programmed with basic behavior patterns. This type of play gives young kids insights into things like self-discipline and empathy. "Working with robots means teaching their creations how to behave," explains Paola Barchi, a teacher at La Villetta. "This means the children have to put themselves in the shoes of their pupil, a huge step psychologically."
The Reggio teachers are hoping to make the Lego software simpler and the interface more intuitive so that children as young as four or five can do the programming themselves. "We are working on an interface using icons and words that represent basic actions — such as flashing lights and turning left — that can be dragged onto an image of the programmable brick," says Augusto Chioccariello of the Genoa-based Institute for Didactic Technology, a key participant in the CAB project.
Another of the project's goals is to discover how children accumulate knowledge and skills as they interact with the computerized toys. Following the principle of learning by doing, Reggio teachers encourage children to work out the systems and procedures largely on their own. "This means the concrete results are slower in coming," says Giovanni Piazza, a La Villetta instructor, "but the knowledge the children accumulate with these kits is built up bit by bit, just like the objects they are constructing."
Just as important as the technical knowledge the kids pick up are the strategies they develop for problem solving. "The children bring into play imagining, designing, expressing ideas, taking on board other ideas, testing theories, looking for solutions," says Barchi. "They develop a relaxed and positive relationship with technology." As technology becomes more and more integrated into our daily lives, that's something we all will need a lot more of in the future.
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