“Information technology is the wrong name, and leads to its misuse. The fact that you can get a lot of information out of the Net is NOT merely what it’s about. Most digital technologies — processors and chips, for example — are not about information at all. They are constructional medium…we make things from them. […]
We describe four major milestones in our development: 1. In the late sixties we recognized that while computers have tremendous potential for use in education, the technology of that time was marginally effective and too expensive. We consequently adopted a strategy of preparing for a future which has now arrived 2. For the first half
“Just as pendulums, paints, clay, and so forth, can be “messed around with,” so can computers. Many people associate computers with a rigid style of work, but this need not be the case. Just as a pencil drawing reflects each artist’s individual intellectual style, so too does work on the computer.” Papert, S. & Frantz,
Papert has been criticized for taking video games seriously–and for soliciting a $3 million grant from Nintendo to develop learning tools that look and feel more like video games than schoolbooks. The three-year project ended last year, but Papert makes no apologies for it. “Change in education isn’t just going to come from ivory-tower academics,”
“Any adult who thinks one of these games is easy need only sit down and try to master one,” he writes. “Most are hard, with complex information–as well as technique–to be mastered.” Video games empower children “to test out ideas about working within prefixed rules and structures in a way few other toys are capable
“I was observing a child working with a C.A.I. program for multiplication. There was something strange going on. I had seen the child do several multiplications quickly and accurately. Then I saw him give a series of wrong answers to easier problems. It took me a while to realize that the child had become bored
”Why is it that children have to do 98,000 repetitions of this?” Mr. Papert said, pointing to an addition problem. “One reason is that they don’t know what they’re looking at. They need an object to think about other things with.” (Seymour Papert) Euchner, C. (1983) Seymour Papert’s ‘Microworld’: An Educational Utopia in Education Week.
“We have described what we consider to be an example of truly educational computing — active, exploratory, student-directed learning involving the use of the computer. Through programming languages such as LOGO, computers allow our students, within certain limits, to perform tasks that are difficult or even impossible to achieve with other materials. We emphasize that
“Precisely these criticisms have often been made by humanists. If they have failed to put schools right what can a “technologist” do? This: take away the cause of the problem. The anti-social nature of school undoubtedly has roots in the class structure of society and in the nature of the Freudian unconscious. As long as
“I know. I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities. I think that the examples I have given of learning in a computational environment provide a glimpse of a context for learning in which socialization