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 […]
Seymour Papert on Logo Read More »
The following excerpt of Seymour Papert speaking comes from a videodisc produced by the MIT Media Lab circa 1986-87. Transcript Seymour Papert: This is an attempt to make a sketch of what a school of the future might be like. Now, nobody really knows what the future will be like, but we know what it
Papert Excerpt from MIT Media Lab Videodisc Read More »
Here is a promotional video produced by the Father of Educational Computing and the Maker Movement, Dr. Seymour Papert, for the LEGO company circa 1987. It introduces learning through robotics construction and Logo programming in an inner-city Boston public school, The Hennigan School. Seymour Papert Introduces LEGO TC Logo from Gary Stager on Vimeo.
Seymour Papert Brings Robotics to Children & Classrooms Read More »
“Across the globe there is a love affair between children and the digital technologies. They love the computers, they love the phones, they love the game machines, and – most relevantly here – their love translates into a willingness to do a prodigious quantity of learning. The idea that this love might be mobilized in
“Indeed, we might summarize all these points by saying that schoolchildren have been deprived of the opportunity of actually doing mathematics in any sense even thinly related to the working activity of mathematicians. Thus, it is not surprising that children resist, that they seldom carry over their training informal manipulation into less formal situations, and
On April, 24, 2014, the MIT Media Lab hosted a forum, “Learning from Seymour Papert,” featuring long-time friends and colleagues, Nicholas Negroponte, Alan Kay, and Marvin Minsky, along with one of Papert’s former students, MIT Professor Mitchel Resnick. I’m grateful that the lab recorded and shared video of the event. Enjoy! The Daily Papert is a
May 2, 2014 – Bonus Content Read More »
“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
“Throughout this essay, I use the word “mathematics” as a stand in for all disciplines. I use the word “math” to refer to the largely obsolete stuff they teach in schools.” Papert, S. (2006). After How Comes What. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (Vol. 2, pp. 581-586). Cambridge:
“The relation of school children to mathematics remains deeply puzzling after more than a decade of wide-scale experiment in the classroom and in the cognitive laboratory. The extent of the puzzle is often obscured by popular prejudices about mathematics and about children. For if one asks: “why cannot every child learn algebra in a week?” the answer