Lego Dacta

Draft

Introduction

Lego DACTA was a Lego bricks product line for education, but also (from 1989 to ????) the name of the Lego Education divison.

“In comparative research studies LEGO Dacta, the LEGO Company's educational division, draws upon extensive scientific research into fields such as cognition, psychology, evolutionary psychology, and epistemology. Adding the child's universe, LEGO Dacta asks the basic question: How can we encourage children to life-long learning?” (Lego pressrelease, 2000, retrieved 16:24, 31 March 2010 (UTC))

DACTA bricks are now sold as "Lego education bricks" and are a bit difficult to find. One cannot buy educational legos in toy stores. They are only available through special educational resellers that sell to schools. Also, it's difficult just to get a list of available sets. “Our aim is to ensure that child care practitioners and teachers receive the best support and guidance possible when they choose to use our products with youngsters. This is why classroom from LEGO Education can only be purchased from dealers that specialise in learning materials.” (Lego.com, retrieved 17:03, 31 March 2010 (UTC))

In many countries, "educational" sets are probably not available or maybe just a few of them. Most "educational" sets are just standard sets in bigger quantities, but there do exist some special pieces like "mosaic" and "letters" bricks as introduced below.

Of course, there are also Lego robotics products, e.g. LEGO Mindstorms for all levels of education, but this is not the topic of this page.

See also: Doblo factory, a openScad-based script to generate DUPLO-compatible play worlds and bricks.

Early learning examples

These example are meant for illustration. Lego may repackage these any time ....

Letters set - Product no. 9530

Lego education DUPLO Letters set

See also:

• Set # 9547-1: Letters Set
• Set # 9816-1: LEGO DUPLO Numbers & Letters

Numbers and mosaic set - Product no. 9531

Lego education DUPLO numbers and mosaic set

See also:

• Set # 9545-1: Numbers Set
• Set # 9503-1: Infant Maths - Shape and Space

Mathematics (Let's Play Math)- Product no. 9543

• Set # 9543-1: Math Games Set

Lego education DUPLO Mathematics set

Large mosaic set - Product no. 9546

Lego education DUPLO Mosaics set

• Set # 9546-1: Mosaics Set (Peeron)

See also:

• Set # 1000-1: Mosaic Set

Construction kits

... many

Animal kits

... many

Persona kits

... many

Links

Activity plans

• Activities at lego.com

• Lego dacta Lesson Plans at lessonplanet.com

• Brick testament (the bible enacted with Legos). That could be reproduced several literature genres.

Inventories and catalogues

• DACTA Inventory by peeron.com, a Lego/Duplo inventory by Dan Boger and Jennifer Finch and others. Absolutely must consult if you need to know if a given kind of part exists.
• Example:

DACTA

DACTA / DUPLO

DACTA / DUPLO / Tiles

Set # 9534-1: Mosaic Tiles

• BrickLink.com is a good alternative. Also includes most parts. E.g. use this to search for "Duplo base plate".

• Pause Magazine's Lego Set Reference Guide - Dacta

• Official Lego Early Learning Catalogue 2010

• Official Lego School Catalogue 2010.

• LEGO Wiki aka Brickipedia, an online LEGO encyclopedia

Commercial resellers

• Since one can't buy educational Lego/Duplo bricks in normal stores, see Where to Buy at lego.com

• Educatec (official swiss reseller, sells online)

Things one can buy from everywhere:

• Base plate, boxes of bricks and all sorts of smaller themed sets (e.g. on Amazon)

Software

See LEGO Mindstorms for Computer-controlled Lego.

Computer-aided design programs:

• LDD (from Lego)
• Leocad
• ldraw
• Blockcad

Lego research

• Lego Learning Institute is a lego division that explores new educational products. Associated researchers are Thomas Wolbers (Edinburgh University), Edith Ackerman and Mitch Resnick (MIT), and David Gauntlett (Univ. of Westminster).