“In New York City there is a growing number of classrooms, I believe nearly fifty now, where future and past seem to meet. In the front a chalkboard: a teacher talking, perhaps about sentences, perhaps about ratios, in the middle desks: children sitting, some listening, some dreaming. Familiar. At the back something different. Two computers […]
“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
“It is impossible to predict what the school of the future will be. History always outsmarts the futurists. But it is easy to predict what it will NOT look like. I am sure that the practice of segregating children by age into “grades” will be seen as an old-fashioned, and inhumane, method of the “assembly
“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
“The introduction of computers is not the first challenge to education values. For example, John Dewey began his campaign for a more active and self-directed style of learning in schools over a hundred years ago, and in these intervening years numerous more or less radical reformers have strived to change School. Back then Dewey undertook
“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
“The cost of giving every child a $750 computer with a five-year life would add only 2 percent to the average cost of educating a child in the United States. With a little R&D [research and development], the computer industry could easily halve or quarter that number.” Papert, Seymour. (1997) From Relearning Education in the
“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
The DailyPapert.com rarely editorializes. The point of this site is to bring the words, wisdom and powerful ideas of Dr. Seymour Papert (bio here) to educators, policy-makers and citizens concerned. Although Papert made pioneering contributions to the worlds of epistemology, mathematics, artificial intelligence, computer science, educational gaming, learning and school reform, he receives too little