But, what are you really learning ...?

The exact question I wanted asked, posed at the end of my coursera "Tinkering" course, coincidentally arising at the end of my last SEP session, as well. Of course, while in your learning lab, it's hard not to see the engagement, intentionality, innovation, and solidarity from the "hard play" the kids put in to each 9 day SEP session. And, I'd argue, taking a hands on "I wonder if ..." approach gives kids permission to slow down, sink in and spend time to figure out not just the "how", but the "why", as in, what's the point of what I want to make? And it's that bridge that takes learning beyond just a "schooling" exercise, to a real world, scientific achievement, taking risks and expanding what they know to test the outer limits of understanding. And every time you make something work you didn't first believe you could, that bounce gives you just that much more confidence that you can tackle the next question.

So, to answer, "what are you really learning?", I'd say how to seek out meaningful questions to answer personal and socially relevant problems, to believe you can be part of a solution, and to see that there is almost always more than 1 right answer. 9 days isn't enough to smooth the groove traditional education carves into kids to reproduce answers about questions they often aren't invested in, to allow them to skip that "one and done" thinking and have fun just playing with "what if" experiments. But, each session showed me evidence if you let kids play with new platforms, they will start down that path. We had a moment in Session 2, where after a case study to make a better app (improve on "No Text While Driving" source code provided by MIT), a student took the user's feedback (Matthew, SEP Academic Coordinator), and designed a new approach (using pre-programmed messages, instead of persistent custom message a user had to type in). We ran out of time and weren't able to re-release it to him, but I took her design and his feedback and have now posted some revised code in the wiki; check it out (notext_v2.aia).

See -- the learning never ends ;) Great work all 54 of you from my SEP sessions!