Abstract:

This paper describes a possible set of software learning activities called \"microworlds.\" The microworlds could be stand-alone \"construction kits\" for single users or teams of users, or located as pockets of activity within a networked multiuser environment. The design of the microworlds is such that exchanges of objects between the microworlds and of ideas among the users enhance the power of the kits as environments for learning. The microworlds described here are for learning about an aspect of motion study, balance. They are also for learning about an aspect of topology, the spatial relationships between vertexes, edges, and faces of three-dimensional shapes. Users construct dinosaur skeletons and mobiles for experiments with balance, and polyhedra for explorations in topology. The mobiles in changed scale can become items of jewelry, and the polyhedra in changed scale can become landscapes along which the dinosaurs can teeter.