Eight Big Ideas Behind the Constructionist Learning Lab
Eight Big Ideas Behind the Constructionist Learning Lab By Dr. Seymour Papert (1999) From the Ph.D. dissertation, “An Investigation of Constructionism in the Maine Youth Center,” by Gary Stager, 2007. A number of translations of this document into other languages may be found here. The first big idea is learning by doing. We all learn […]
January 17, 2017
Seymour Papert makes several profound points in this very short clip from a 1991 conference keynote. The complete video, along with its transcript may be found here. “Another way of describing what school does to children is infantilizing them, treating them like children so to speak. Now, one’s got to be careful playing with that […]
A Heartfelt Tribute to Seymour Papert
“The world lost an amazing wit, intellect, inventor, bricoleur, scholar, freedom fighter, and friend with the passing of Seymour Papert. He was arguably the most influential educator of the past half century. It would be wise for us all to start thinking about what we each might do to build upon his mighty legacy.” Gary Stager, […]
Seymour Papert on Logo
This commercial video, produced around 1986, features Seymour Papert answering questions from teachers. This discussion explores many of Papert’s recurring themes of children, computers, and powerful ideas. Papert also interprets Piagetian theory for the assembled practitioners. Transcript Seymour Papert: Should we sit down? I think what I learned most from Piaget is that the […]
The Collected Writings of Seymour Papert (thus far)
Will Richardson and Gary Stager, curator of DailyPapert.com, have done a great deal of work updating the collected writings of Seymour Papert. The Papert Archives Project project is an ongoing effort to find, transcribe, preserve, and share audio and video of Dr. Papert. Dr. Cynthia Solomon, Papert’s collaborator on the creation of Logo, shares amazing old […]
The Conservation of Piaget: The Computer as Grist to the Constructivist Mill
The Conservation of Piaget: The Computer as Grist to the Constructivist Mill is an overlooked academic paper written by Seymour Papert in 1988. It represents one of Dr. Papert’s few published works of psychology and clarifies some misconceptions of Piaget while introducing perspectives from women’s studies. Papert, S. (1988). The Conservation of Piaget: The Computer as […]
April 8, 2014
“Children get the knowledge they need, when they need it, from networks of friends, hot lines and, when they are old enough, magazines and the Internet. A first step toward building a new relationship with kids is to join them in their exploration of new ways to learn. In addition to giving us their trust, […]
March 5, 2014
“The essence of Piaget was how much learning occurs without being planned or organized by teachers or schools. His whole point was that children develop intellectually without being taught!” “Papert misses ‘Big Ideas’ of the good old days in AI” MIT News. July 10, 2012. Retrieved on March 3, 2014 from http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2002/papert.html. The Daily Papert […]
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 […]
