Sherry Turkle Remembers Seymour Papert
Sherry Turkle’s comments about Seymour Papert were one of the highlights of the 2017 MIT Media Lab celebration of Seymour Papert’s life. Here is a version her tribute, published in the London Review of Books. Read Remembering Seymour Papert. Tweet This Post
Constructionism: A New Opportunity for Elementary Science Education
There are countless dissertations citing the 1986 NSF proposal, Constructionism: A New Opportunity for Elementary Science Education, by MIT Professor Seymour Papert. For years, I have been on the hunt for the actual document. I even contacted my Congressman to get a copy since the project was funded by the National Science Foundation. Despite those... Read More
The Lessons of Logo
The Lessons of Logo Teaching and Computers Magazine “The Magazine for Teachers of the 1990s” March/April 1990 – Volume 7, Number 5 Orlando, L. C. (1990). The Lessons of Logo. Teaching and Computing, 7(5), 20-25. Teaching and Computers Lessons of Logo 1990 searchable It was almost 25 years ago that Logo, the first programming language... Read More
Powerful Idea Du Jour from Seymour Papert
“Once I was alerted to the concept of “hard fun” I began listening for it and heard it over and over. It is expressed in many different ways, all of which all boil down to the conclusion that everyone likes hard challenging things to do. But they have to be the right things matched to... Read More
Today’s Thought from Seymour Papert
“Two fundamental ideas run through this book. The first is that it is possible to design computers so that learning to communicate with them can be a natural process, more like learning French by living in France than like trying to learn it through the unnatural process of American foreign-language instruction in classrooms. Second, learning... Read More
A Bit of Wisdom from Seymour Papert
“All of us, professionals as well as laymen, must consciously break the habits we bring to thinking about the computer. Computation is in its infancy. It is hard to think about computers of the future without projecting onto them the properties and the limitations of those we think we know today. And nowhere is this... Read More
Thought of the Day from Seymour Papert
“Many children who grow up in our cities are surrounded by the artifacts of science but have good reason to see them as belonging to “the others”; in many case they are perceived as belonging to the social enemy. Still other obstacles are more abstract, though ultimately of the same nature. Most branches of the... Read More
Today’s Word for Learning from Seymour Papert
“Most writers emphasized using computers for games, entertainment, income tax, electronic mail, shopping, and banking. A few talked about the computer as a teaching machine. This book too poses the question of what will be done with personal computers, but in a very different way. I shall be talking about how computers may affect the... Read More
A Daily Dose of Inspiration from Seymour Papert
“My proud father suggested “being clever” as an explanation. But I was painfully aware that some people who could not understand the differential could easily do things I found much more difficult. Slowly I began to formulate what I still consider the fundamental fact about learning: Anything is easy if you can assimilate it to... Read More
March 25, 2020
“In many schools today, the phrase “computer-aided instruction” means making the computer teach the child. One might say the computer is being used to program the child. In my vision, the child programs the computer and, in doing so, both acquires a sense of mastery over a piece of the most modern and powerful technology... Read More