June 27, 2012

“It is self-indulgent of us as teachers to say that we can spend 3 hours a week with a student and give them wonderful experiences. What about the billion other children on the planet? What about the rest of the hours for that child? Our task is to identify powerful ideas that have been dis-empowered. [...]

June 26, 2012

“This is not the first Conference where I’ve come in and the first four people I spoke to complain how boring things are in the exhibit hall.  I haven’t been there myself, but I’ve been to others.  And they’re not boring in the sense that one goes in there and one sees a lot of [...]

May 29, 2012

Many thanks to Scott Traylor for finding, scanning and sharing this gem from the Boston Globe of 5th graders interviewing Dr. Papert. (PDF) Boston_Globe_Fun_Pages_Seymour Papert_Interview Nov 13, 1994 Tweet This Post

May 18, 2012

“On the Cost of Computation in Schools A final word about the cost of doing all this. Turtles. music boxes. computer controlled motors and the like are less expensive than teletypes. Displays are slightly more expensive but becoming rapidly cheaper. So if. computers are being used in a school, there is no good economic argument  [...]

May 15, 2012

“Building and playing with castles of sand, families of dolls, houses of Lego, and collections of cards provide images of activities which are well rooted in contemporary cultures and which plausibly enter into learning processes that go beyond specific narrow skills. I do not believe that anyone fully understands what gives these activities their quality [...]

May 10, 2012 (Rare Discoveries Week)

“So I think the number one task has to be to really create spearheads, nuclei of change where we can really demonstrate that something really different can be done  – something not improvement, but radically different.” Papert, S. (2000) Keynote Address at CUE Conference. Palm Springs, CA.  In May 2000, Seymour Papert delivered a barn-burner [...]

April 19, 2012

“Why then should computers in schools be confined to computing the sum of the squares of the first twenty odd numbers and similar so-called ‘problem-solving’ uses? Why not use them to produce some action? There is no better reason than the intellectual timidity of the computers in education movement, which seems remarkably reluctant to use [...]

April 13, 2012

There is little in life that can take the place of experience. – CMK 2012 guest speaker and incredibly popular filmmaker, Casey Neistat On many occasions over several years, Dr. Papert and I would discuss the need to build bridges to the wider (non-computer-using) community of progressive educators. We discussed the idea of hosting a [...]

March 27, 2012

“In describing bricoleur programmers, we have made analogies to sculptors, cooks, and painters. Bricoleurs are also like writers who don’t use an outline but start with one idea, associate to another, and find a connection with a third. In the end, an essay “grown” through negotiation and association is not necessarily any less elegant or [...]

March 23, 2012

On many occasions over several years, Dr. Papert and I would discuss the need to build bridges to the wider (non-computer-using) community of progressive educators. We discussed the idea of hosting a grand summit at which the educators we admire outside of the “edtech” world could spend sufficient time experiencing how the computer could enhance, [...]