Technologies for Lifelong Kindergarten

In kindergartens and early-elementary classrooms, manipulative materials (such as Cuisenaire Rods and Pattern Blocks) play an important role in children’s learning, enabling children to explore mathematical and scientific concepts (such as number, shape, and size) through direct manipulation of physical objects. But as children grow older, and learn more advanced concepts, the educational focus shifts away from direct manipulation to more abstract formal methods. This paper discusses a new generation of computationally-enhanced manipulative materials, called “digital manipulatives,” designed to radically change this traditional progression. These new manipulatives (such as programmable building bricks and communicating beads) aim to enable children to continue to learn with a “kindergarten approach” even as they grow older – and also to enable young children to learn concepts (in particular, “systems concepts” such as feedback and emergence) that were previously considered “too advanced” for them.