A good kindergarten fosters the spirit of learning by giving children materials, time and control over what they make. Some educators and media researchers are working to replicate this spirit of curiosity-driven tinkering in all classrooms, allowing students of diverse ages to explore and invent. The notion is that technological contraptions should be the material objects that replace finger paints and modeling clay in a logical but playful progression from kindergarten to university. This notion was on display at "Mindfest," a recent conference on learning technologies held at MIT's Media Laboratory.

Take Mindstorms, the programmable Lego bricks and sensors that allow kids to concoct mechanized and automated inventions.The hope is that children will combine these programmable blocks (called "crickets") with ordinary Lego blocks and other materials to compose playful, creative multimedia projects. At Mindfest, grade school student Kayty Himelstein attached a programmable cricket with a touch sensor to her bird feeder to create a program that counted birds landing on the feeder. She put up flags to see if birds were attracted to particular colors and compiled all of her data-for fun.