INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

MIT Scholar Brings Legos Into the Digital Age

By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

Dr. Resnick, a professor of research in education, hopes that his creations will provide richer learning experiences and will prepare children for an increasingly computerized world.

He has been designing toys here since 1992, but lately his work seems to be gaining wider acceptance within the laboratory. He is slated to play a large role in its proposed center for children and learning, which is to be completed in 2001. And he's part of the laboratory's new "Toys of Tomorrow" project, a partnership with Hasbro, Mattel, Walt Disney, and Lego to design computerized toys.

An underlying principle of his work is that children learn best by designing things themselves and seeing how they work. "I was always looking for a new way of exploring something," he says of his own childhood in suburban Philadelphia. "My parents were tolerant enough to let me dig up the back yard and make a miniature-golf course, for instance." Through his research, he hopes to use technology to let kids undertake more-complicated explorations.

One of his creations is a Lego block with a miniature computer built in. The high-tech block, only a little larger than the nine-volt battery that fuels it, is about as powerful as the Apple II computers that were once popular in elementary schools and homes. The Lego block carries two sensors and can control two motors.

Children can use desktop computers to write instructions for the blocks in a simple programming language called Logo. Then, using infrared signals, they can beam these instructions to specific computerized blocks in a model.

Dr. Resnick (below) calls the blocks "crickets," because he imagines that they "chirp" to each other when they use their infrared signals.

Rick Friedman, Black Star, for The Chronicle

To show what the blocks can do, he has assembled crickets into two dinosaur-like figures. When the two creatures detect one another, via their crickets, they both do a dance, rolling slightly backwards and then forwards. When the two are separated, they sit lifeless.

"Children could design behaviors for the stuff they build," says Dr. Resnick, noting that kids who program the blocks can change the movements that the models make. In the process of programming the toys, he adds, children learn logic skills.

The crickets aren't just for building action figures. Dr. Resnick says the small, lightweight computers can be used to breathe life into school science courses as well.

As part of a project called "Beyond Black Boxes," he and four colleagues are encouraging children to build their own scientific instruments, using crickets and other devices.

The premise of the project is that modern electronics have become highly complex, their inner workings hidden away in tiny circuits and plastic boxes. "Whereas a previous generation of scientists became hooked on scientific investigation by taking apart their radios, today's children see little that they can understand when they open up their radios and other modern electronic devices," the project's leaders write in a report. "Students are more likely to feel a sense of personal investment in a scientific investigation if they design the scientific instruments themselves."

So the scientists are bringing crickets to after-school programs to help children piece together their own scientific tools.

One pair of fifth-grade girls in Cambridge decided to use their crickets to find out what kinds of birds were visiting their bird feeder. They placed a perch in front of the food and rigged it so that when a bird landed, a small string attached to one of the cricket's sensors was pulled. They programmed the cricket, in turn, to start a small motor, moving a peg that presses the shutter release on a disposable camera pointed at the birdseed. The girls call their creation "Fine Feathered Friends Fotography."

In designing the bird feeder, they had to solve several problems, among them how far away to put the camera. In the process, they learned about focal lengths and other concepts. "Some of the richest scientific learning comes in building the instrument itself," says Dr. Resnick.

Another prototype in his office is a necklace of "smart" beads. Each one has a tiny colored light and sensors that let it communicate with neighboring beads. The beads can be programmed to light up under certain conditions.

To demonstrate the system, Dr. Resnick held out a string of eight beads, one of which was lit but separated from the rest. He shifted the lit bead so that it touched the neighboring beads, and the light jumped from one to another along the chain until it reached the end, where it went out.

Children could learn to program the beads to create a variety of different patterns. They could make the final bead send the light all the way back up the string, for instance.

For someone who has no children himself, Dr. Resnick's workspace -- he calls it his "play area" -- has an impressive arsenal of Legos and other toys. There are dozens of plastic containers filled with every size of Lego block known to researcher or child. Around Christmas one year, he recalls, a delivery man came to his office with a message that would put Santa to shame: "Excuse me, I have 23 crates of Legos for you."

Michael Thomsen, director of software research for The Lego Group in Denmark, says there's no guarantee that Dr. Resnick's computerized blocks will ever hit toy shelves. "It's sort of the further reaches of our research," he says. But an earlier project by Dr. Resnick is now being sold to elementary schools: a system that lets children control standard motorized Legos directly from a computer.

Some education researchers say children are better off playing with simpler toys. They say the best way to improve learning is to help children make better use of existing playthings.

Even so, Dr. Resnick predicts toys will look much different a few years from now. "There will be a much larger electronic and computational component to the toys of tomorrow," he says.

He points out that some computerized toys are already on the market. One example is Tamagotchi, a "virtual pet" sold by the Japanese toymaker Bandai. The keychain-sized computer game has a small display and a few buttons that let a user feed, clean, and entertain the digital companion. And this year Mattel released Talk with Me Barbie, which has a computer inside. Children can program the doll to speak. This Barbie can also remember a child's name, birthday, and other information.

Dr. Resnick says such toys are interesting but offer children only limited choices. What remains to be seen, he says, is whether toy manufacturers will produce toys that use technology to challenge kids in new ways.

"It could be used in trivial ways, just to jazz things up," he says. "Or it could be used to really transform the way children think and learn."