August 24, 2012

“The word educology reminds us that we need a theory of education. One might say theories already exist. There is educational psychology; there is a theory of instruction; there are courses on the theory of how to administrate schools. But these are not theories of education as a whole. They are theories of small aspects [...]

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 1, 2012

“The computer can be a partner in a great diversity of relationships. The computer is an expressive medium that different people can make their own in their own way. But people who want to approach the computer in a “non-canonical” style are rarely given the opportunity to do so. They are discouraged by the dominant [...]

April 4, 2012

“I find an interesting toe-hold for the problem in which I called the playful facet–the element of tease inherent in the idea that it would be particularly oxymoronic to convey the idea of constructionism through a definition since, after all, constructionism boils down to demanding that everything be understood by being constructed. The joke is [...]

April 3, 2012

“My goal in life which has been my major activity over the last 10 years, has been to find ways children can use this technology as a constructive medium to do things that no child could do before, to do things at a level of complexity that was not previously accessible to children.” Papert, S. [...]

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, [...]

March 8, 2012

“But insofar as it can be seen as an aspect of education, it is about something far more specific than constructivism in the usual sense of the word. The principle of getting things done, of making things — and of making them work – is important enough, and different enough from any prevalent ideas about [...]

January 17, 2012

“One of my central mathetic tenets is that the construction that takes place “in the head” often happens especially felicitously when it is supported by construction of a more public son “in the world” – a sand castle or a cake, a LEGO house or a corporation, a computer program, a poem, or a theory [...]

October 26, 2011

“The majority of the students were in special education classes both inside the facility and in regular school. Typically, in special education the process stays within the standard school epistemological framework, often presenting much the same material just slower and with more personal attention. We were trying to make a more fundamental change by focusing [...]

October 25, 2011

“Let’s go back to Dewey for a moment. Intellectual growth, he often told us, must be rooted in the child’s experience. But surely one of the fundamental problems of the school is how to extend or use the child’s experience. It must be understood that “experience” does not mean mere busy work: two children who [...]