Samba schools as an inspiration for technologies for children under the age of five

Seymour Papert’s vision of constructionism called for children to be active, empowered, creative learners, building public entities linked to their strong interests in order to connect with powerful ideas. The increasing ubiquity of technology use by children under five, and its information access bias call for more widely-available, constructionist-inspired technologies and learning ecologies for this age group. Our approach in designing technologies to reach this goal has been to support children creating, connecting, and communicating, following Papert’s example of Rio de Janeiro’s escolas de samba (samba schools) as learning communities to emulate. In addition, we think of the design process itself as a constructionist learning process, one where we form our own escolas de samba to create, connect, and communicate together in a Carnival of ideas.