Behaviour construction kit

Constructionism suggests that learners are particularly likely to create new ideas when actively engaged in making external artefacts that they can refiect upon and share with others. A behaviour construction kit enables children to play with and buiId cybernetic constructions that interact with the environment and with one another. The construction kit allows the creation of contraptions and vehicles endowed with voices, sound and light patterns. Children can infiuence the behaviour of their construction by acting upon the sensors and can modify it by redefining its behaviours and reconfiguring its building blocks. A visual programming environment based on the metaphor of behavioural gears and action rules is described. In this framework teachers can define a number of microworlds to help children rnake their own constructions.The children can program the construction through a learning-by-imitation process: selecting existing behaviours, inspecting and modifying thern, and eventually defining new ones.