May 1, 2014
“Everyone works with procedures in everyday life. Playing a game or giving directions to a lost motorist are exercises in procedural thinking. But in everyday life procedures are lived and used, they are not necessarily reflected on. In the LOGO environment, a procedure becomes a thing that is named, manipulated, and recognized as the children […]
April 24, 2014
“Many children are held back in their learning because they have a model of learning in which you have either ‘got it’ or ‘got it wrong.’ But when you program a computer you almost never get it right the first time. Learning to be a master programmer is learning to become highly skilled at isolating […]
June 25, 2012
“Isn’t it time for us to grow up? And as we grow up, we should stop seeing ourselves as specialists of computers in education, because that casts us in the role of a kind of service profession. Accepting the role allows that other people are the ones to decide the big goals of education, what […]
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 […]
April 24, 2012
“It’s astonishing – no other word would do – that everywhere where there is knowledge work, you expect to see a computer on every desk and yet our schools still boast of the fact that we’ve finally achieved a computer in every classroom. Wow, it is astonishing.” Papert, S. (2004). Will Going Digital Improve or […]
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 […]
December 13, 2011
“In 1971 Channel 5, a local Boston TV station, produced a program on children in new learning situations and included a segment on Logo. Here is that segment. My one regret is that Seymour was not talking with a child during the filming. By the way I am indebted to youTube and one of its […]
November 15, 2011
“I think that it is shameful that the education world has allowed the computer industry to impose its idea of what a computer should be and how it should be used.” Papert, Seymour. (1997) From Relearning Education in the Age of Technology – an interview by Steven Koenig. U.S. Society and Values – U.S.I.A. Electronic […]
November 8, 2011
“Ten years before T.H.E. Journal was launched [1972], Logo was designed as a programming language that could be accessible to children. The spirit of the enterprise was like the way the Wright brothers approached aviation: I thought of giving children the power to program computers as a tiny first step in a complex process whose […]
October 27, 2011
“I believe in “Kid Power.” Our education systems underestimate kids. It INFANTALIZES them by assuming they are incompetent. An eight-year old is capable of doing 90% of tech support and a 12 year old 100%. And this is not exploiting the children: it is giving them a powerful learning experience.” Papert, Seymour. (2006) Seymour Papert […]
