Talk:Educational toy

Advertising

The list of examples is very much like a list of advertising links. How can this be managed without degrading the genuinely helpful links? Rixs (talk) 12:11, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Even without the advertising issues, the list still reads very random and not so helpful. This article already has multiple examples with explanatory text in the prose. I think it would be better to include the relevant non-spammy examples in some simple prose and remove the list from here. Ie, preserve Scale model but remove qfix robot kit - I think with zero sourcing as to which brands are of weight, it's better to err on the side of caution and only include general categories of toys rather than specific brands. BTW, the list here was merged from a separate and equally unhelpful List of educational toys[1]. Siawase (talk) 14:25, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Essay

This article is set out too much like an essay rather than a Wikipedia entry 58.166.240.198 06:12, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Merge

An article exists at Educational toy. The two articles really need to be merged. Both need references, and I would suggest that there may be useful sources in the articles in the Category:Educational toys category.--Michig 19:37, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Merge edutainment, educational game, and educational software

Hi everyone -- please read my discussion of the overlap between edutainment, educational game, and educational software at Talk:Edutainment#Merge edutainment, educational game, and educational software and leave your comments there. Thanks! CaseyPenk (talk) 13:19, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Constructivism, Constructionist, and Maker movements

Thank you, User: Mary Mark Ockerbloom, for starting to clean up and expand this article. I hope you intend to eventually cover the Constructivism and Constructionism (learning theory) movements, Jean Piaget, Seymour Papert, Mitchel Resnick, and more recent research and developments in the field, including the development of Maker culture. Best wishes, Reify-tech (talk) 03:51, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• Thanks for the suggestions, @Reify-tech:. I've worked in a couple of links that you mention so far. I won't be able to work on the page for the next few days, so if you want to jump in feel free; we shouldn't run into each others edits. I do want to try and keep the page focused on toys and not recap a lot of educational theory, but I agree that mentioning the relevant figures is desirable (see e.g. the mention of Papert). Best wishes, Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 02:28, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
• Also, I would love to have a really good photo of an elaborate Tinkertoy construction on the page. Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 02:34, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree that brief mention of the related educational theories is all that is needed in this article. The fact that some influential educational toys ("Turtles", Lego Logo) originated directly from researchers working with Papert at MIT should be mentioned as well. As for Tinkertoys, I didn't see much in the Wikimedia archive, except for a lot of unrelated old Project Tinkertoy photos. By far the most complex Tinkertoy construction was the computer made from 10,000 parts by Danny Hillis (cofounder of Connection Machine). His Tinkertoy Computer plays tic-tac-toe, and never loses (the worst it can get is a stalemate). It's now in the Computer History Museum: http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/X39.81 Reify-tech (talk) 15:10, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

I have added a number of influential toys, with brief summaries of their significance and Wikilink pointers to the relevant articles. Also, I have added some pictures and set up several image galleries to improve the page layout. Reify-tech (talk) 21:10, 27 January 2017 (UTC)