Award Recognizes Champion of Learning Through Play
The Clubhouse Network congratulates Mitchel Resnick, cofounder of The Clubhouse: Where Technology Meets Imagination, on receiving the LEGO Foundation’s 2021 LEGO Prize. The award recognizes his work advocating for and championing learning through play. Resnick is the LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, MA, where he leads the Lifelong Kindergarten Group. He also serves on The Clubhouse Network’s Board of Directors.
“I’m thrilled that LEGO is recognizing Mitchel and his commitment to bringing playful, creative learning into the lives of young people around the world,” said Gail Breslow, Executive Director of The Clubhouse Network. “The Clubhouse Network is grateful for his leadership, advocacy, and deep dedication to youth.”
Together with Natalie Rusk, in 1993 he co-founded the Computer Clubhouse project. Today, the Clubhouse Network is an international community of more than 100 Clubhouses located in 21 countries. Each Clubhouse provides a creative, safe, and free out-of-school learning environment where young people from underserved communities work with adult mentors to explore their own ideas, develop new skills, and build confidence in themselves through the use of technology.
I plan to use the LEGO Prize to help spread the ideas, activities, and technologies of creative learning around the world.
“Throughout my career, I’ve always been inspired by the LEGO values of imagination, creativity, caring, and learning, so I’m deeply honored to receive the LEGO Prize. I plan to use the LEGO Prize to help spread the ideas, activities, and technologies of creative learning around the world,” said Resnick. “But this award is not just for me. It is also for the many people I have worked with over the last 40 years: the dozens of researchers who have collaborated with me in developing technologies and activities to engage children in creative learning experiences; the thousands of educators around the world who have put our ideas and tools into practice; and the millions of children who have taken our technologies in directions we never imagined. We’ve learned as much from them as they’ve learned from us, and I share this prize with all of them.”
As head of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, Mitchel explores how new technologies can engage people in creative learning experiences. In addition to the Clubhouse, Resnick’s research group has also developed the “programmable brick” technology that inspired the LEGO Mindstorms robotics kit, and Scratch, an online community where children program and share interactive stories, games, and animations.
Since 1985, the LEGO® Prize has been presented to individuals or organizations that have made an outstanding contribution to the lives of children. The prize is accompanied by a cash award of $100,000 USD to further research and development within learning through play. The LEGO Foundation aims to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow; a mission that it shares with the LEGO Group.