“How do we make writing become hard fun? One way is to develop for kids “writable” activities that they love to do. The building of robotic devices acquires “writability” because it lends itself to stage-by-stage description. Its writability is further enhanced by the use of word processors and digital cameras. But beyond technology there is […]
“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
“Logo gave many thousands of elementary teachers their first opportunity to appropriate the computer in ways that would extend their personal styles of teaching. This was not easy for them. They were frustrated by poor conditions: They usually had to work with minimal computer systems and often had to share them among several classrooms; opportunities
“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
“A central idea behind our learning environments was that children would be able to use powerful ideas from mathematics and science as instruments of personal power. For example, geometry would become a means to create visual effects on a television screen. But achieving this often meant developing new topics in mathematics and science, an enterprise
“We do have to think also about content, we do have to think about making another kind of intellectual diet for children, we have to think about them understanding this technology in a deeper way than simply being able to use it, however magical and wonderful and that may be, for access of knowledge and
“We better recognize that laptop is just a little step in the progress towards the shift from the medium of paper, the primacy of paper-based static media to the primacy of electronic digital media, that’s going to come, it’s going to sweep the world, it’s going to change what we think we can know, how
“I end by mentioning two less specific “firsts” with which “Teaching Children Thinking” should be credited. At that time the concept of computers in education was synonymous with CAI (computer assisted instruction). I believe that “Teaching Children Thinking” was the first published paper to suggest that the child could be in charge of the machine
“Q: So far, we have only talked about access to the Internet. Would you speculate on how other technologies could affect American education? Dr. Papert: I was not talking about access to the Internet. I was talking about something much deeper in which computers serve as materials for construction as well as providing access to
“Some of my colleagues are disappointed that School manages to so dilute the ideas or so circumscribe their impact that they can be “integrated” into an essentially unchanged system. I have learned to see things differently through my Piaget-trained eyes. At the core of Piaget’s theory of development is the process he calls assimilation: when