The more I’ve delved into education, the more I’ve become interested in the ideologies of people such as Jean Piaget, Seymour Papert, and other constructivist/constructionist thinkers. So in the spirit of constructionism, i have decided to temporarily deviate from NYU’s Educational Communication and Technology graduate program, and enroll in their Interactive Telecommunications Program program, where I will be learning my way around circuit boards.

I have always been fascinated with electronics, and I finally have the opportunity take advantage of all the affordances that both computing and physical objects contain. I am really looking forward to examining how I could leverage this sort of blended medium to enhance student engagement, and overall learning experience. Along with the technical skills I plan on learning, I am also extremely interested in the learning theory based around a constructionist courses such as the this.

I am hoping to absorb as much as I possibly can, and take what i have learned into early childhood classrooms. By no means am i a teacher, but I do understand that children need to not only understand how to use technology, but also how to design and create in order to support the amount of innovation that is necessary in the future. This sort of philosophy falls inline with what Seymour Papert speaks about, so no time like the present to learn by doing it myself. Wish me luck!

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co-authored by: Adrienne Schafer

Background

Young children learn how to recognize and identify things such as numbers and letters at school. What they don’t learn from their teachers is how to recognize and properly express emotions. This is something they are expected to learn at home, but if a young child has been abused or lives in a household where the only emotions they’re exposed to are negative, they don’t have the opportunity to gain emotional intelligence and build emotional literacy. Young children need to be taught how to properly recognize and express their emotions to fully realize their potential and to avoid unnecessary conflict in school and social settings.

EEMIO, which stands for Enabling Emotional Instruction & Observation, is a physical toy coupled with a web site that provides children with activities and lessons that help them build their emotional intelligence or EQ by developing emotional vocabulary, also known as “feeling words” as well as coping mechanisms for emotional situations. A child’s inability to express or recognize emotions can lead to behavioral problems which extend to the classroom and ultimately affect their learning experience. By understanding and learning to identify different types of emotions, children can apply methods of self-regulation.

It can be difficult for adults such as social workers to get children to discuss their feelings if they try to sit down and talk about it. Allowing young children to interact with a toy and web site provides a level of safety and familiarity that encourages them to open up more. This approach allows adults to expand on topics the child might have touched upon during their interactions with the toy.

According to the Emotional Literacy Campaign at www.feel.org “ ‘Emotional Literacy’ is the ability to recognize, understand and appropriately express our emotions.”
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