“My challenge to you is to think about how to place the evolution of learning technologies in comparison with the progress from technology‑aided theater to cinema and beyond. It’s almost inevitable that a new technology would be first used by grafting it onto existing practices. Thus, the computer gives rise to computer‑assisted teaching and the […]
“I would suggest that one reason education reform has not worked is that it almost always treats these dimensions as separate and tries to reform one or another–the choice depending on who is doing the reforming. Curriculum reformers try to put new curriculum in an otherwise unchanged system but ignore the fact that the old
“During the week of the conference you have been immersed in exciting and focused discussions about actual uses of computers in real educational settings. So it should be. But it is equally appropriate at the beginning and at the end of the week to look at larger issues that are further removed from the reality
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
“Skeptics of the possibility of change in schools often recall that it is now a hundred years since the American philosopher and educator John Dewey wrote his persuasive books criticizing the way schools teach and proposing the new methods that became known as progressive education. Nobody has refuted Dewey or proved him wrong-in fact nobody
“Most of what goes under the name “edutainment” reminds me of George Bernard Shaw’s response to a famous beauty who speculated on the marvelous child they could have together: “With your brains and my looks…” He retorted, “But what if the child had my looks and your brains?”” Papert, S. (1998) Does Easy Do It?
“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
“Everyone knows computers help children learn. But I was coming to understand that most parents will do better at sharing and enhancing their children’s learning if they take a hard look at their own learning’. Many need to work at their learning habits; most, even those who are adept at using computers should learn new
“Demoting reading from its privileged position in the school curriculum is only one of many consequences of Knowledge Machines. A child who has grown up with the freedom to explore provided by such machines will not sit quietly through the standard curriculum dished out in most schools today. Already, children are made increasingly restive by
“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