This paper was the first initiative to try to define Web 2.0 and understand its implications for the next generation of software, looking at both design patterns and business modes. Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an architecture of participation, and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.

In this paper we give a detailed account of the design principles and construction of activities underlying a model-based approach to learning about the relationships between position, velocity and acceleration, and corresponding kinematics graphs. In these activities, students controlled the movement of objects in a programming environment, recording the motion data and plotting corresponding position-time and velocity-time graphs. They shared their findings on a specially-designed web-based collaboration system, and posted cross-site challenges to which others could react. We present learning episodes that provide evidence of students making discoveries about the relationships between different representations of motion. We conjecture that these discoveries arose from their activity in building models of motion and their participation in classroom and online community.

{Why are mathematical ideas so hard? Is mathematics an unassailable peak, which only the few can ever hope to conquer? Or can mathematics be broadened to be accessible to the many? Noss and Hoyles have written a book which challenges some of the conventional wisdoms on the learning of mathematics. They use the computer as a window onto mathematical meaning-making, drawing together the threads of their individual and collaborative research over more than a decade. The pivot of their theory is the idea of webbing, which explains how someone struggling with a new mathematical idea can draw on supportive knowledge, and reconciles the individual's role in mathematical learning with the part played by epistemological, social and cultural forces.}

Video games more than any other media have become an essential part of contemporary children's culture. Whereas most research efforts have concentrated on discussing the effects of game playing, Minds in Play takes a close look at games as a context for learning by placing children in the roles of producers rather than consumers of games. Kafai follows a class of sixteen fourth-grade students from an inner-city public elementary school as they were programming games in Logo to teach fractions to third graders. In this context, programming became a medium for children's personal and creative expression: in the design of their games children engaged their fantasies and built relationships with other pockets of reality that went beyond traditional school approaches.

In research about the Internet, too much attention is paid to its ability to provide access to information. This thesis argues that the Internet can be used not just as a conduit for information, but as a context for learning through community-supported collaborative construction. A “constructionist” approach to use of the Internet makes particularly good use of its educational potential. The Internet provides opportunities to move beyond the creation of constructionist tools and activities to the creation of “constructionist cultures.” These issues are explored through a specific example: MOOSE Crossing, a text-based virtual world (or “MUD”) designed to be a constructionist learning environment for children ages 8 to 13. On MOOSE Crossing, children have constructed a virtual world together, making new places, objects, and creatures. Kids have made baby penguins that respond differently to five kinds of food, fortune tellers who predict the future, and the place at the end of the rainbow— answer a riddle, and you get the pot of gold. This thesis discusses the design principles underlying a new programming language (MOOSE) and client interface (MacMOOSE) designed to make it easier for children to learn to program on MOOSE Crossing. It presents a detailed analysis, using an ethnographic methodology, of children's activities and learning experiences on MOOSE Crossing, with special focus on seven children who participated in a weekly after-school program from October 1995 through February 1997. In its analysis of children's activities, this thesis explores the relationship between construction and community. It describes how the MOOSE Crossing children motivated and supported one another's learning experiences: community provided support for learning through design and construction. Conversely, construction activities helped to create a particularly special, intellectually engaging sort of community. Finally, it argues that the design of all virtual communities, not just those with an explicitly educational focus, can be enhanced by a constructionist approach.

This paper reports on a design experiment in the domain of number sequences conducted in the course of the WebLabs project. We iteratively designed and tested a set of activities and tools in which 10-14 year old students used the ToonTalk programming environment to construct models of sequences and series, and then shared their models and their observations about them utilising a web-based collaboration system. We report on the evolution of a design pattern (programming method) called “Streams” which enables students to engage in the process of summing and “hold the series in their hand”, and consequently make sophisticated arguments regarding the mathematical structures of the sequences without requiring the use of algebra. While the focus of this paper is mainly on the design of activities and its epistemological foundations, we include some illustrative examples of one group of students' work, which indicate the potential of the activities and tools for expressing and reflecting on deep mathematical ideas.