Changing Minds: Computers, Learning, and Literacy

This publication, Changing Minds, examines whether education, and science education in particular, can be transformed by the computer so that children can learn more, learn more easily at an earlier age, and learn with pleasure and commitment. While aimed particularly at science teachers and those in the science education field, the book covers the range of issues surrounding the use of information and communication technologies in education. The author argues that computers can be the basis for changing how people think and learn.

The book explores a theory of how computers can be catalysts for change in education. In particular, the author discusses how intuitive knowledge is the platform on which students build their scientific understanding. He also discusses the material and social reasons for the computer's potential and describes how, with computers, everyone can be a creator as well as consumer of dynamic and interactive expressive forms.

• Chapter 1 begins by introducing the core claim of the book: computers can be the basis for an empowering new literacy, hence, they can change the way people think and learn.
• Chapter 2 introduces a concrete and realistic image of how new computational representations can change the landscape of learning important scientific ideas.
• Chapter 3 is a set of examples of children and teachers who have experimented with learning with computational media.
• Chapters 4 and 5 introduce the learning theory that explains why computers can be such powerful catalysts of change in education.
• Chapters 6 and 7 explain how to design computer systems that are both comprehensible and powerful. Two views of computer systems are introduced. The structural view explains the logic of the system in its own terms. The functional view connects computer systems most directly to what people care about.
• Chapter 8 provides more examples of real children and teachers and highlights the role of the computer in engaging intuitive knowledge and how students can reach levels of accomplishment in programming because of the characteristics of computational media.
• Chapter 9 discusses social and cultural issues to examine in some detail the resonance or antiresonance of computational literacies with current common sense about computer systems and how people learn.