Eight Big Ideas Behind the Constructionist Learning Lab By Dr. Seymour Papert (1999) From the Ph.D. dissertation, “An Investigation of Constructionism in the Maine Youth Center,” by Gary Stager, 2007. A number of translations of this document into other languages may be found here. The first big idea is learning by doing. We all learn …
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“Connecting new knowledge to things you know and love, and things you think you can do, makes you feel good about it, makes you take it in in a form that is your own. By taking in knowledge in a form that feels to you as you, you change your feelings about yourself as well. …
Alan Kay and Seymour Papert testify before a rogue’s gallery of Congressional misfits and a clueless venture capitalist. In October 1995, the House Committee Economic and Educational Opportunities and House Science Committees held a nearly three-hour hearing to examine “technological advances in education.” The first two hours or so of the hearing are a …
“The world lost an amazing wit, intellect, inventor, bricoleur, scholar, freedom fighter, and friend with the passing of Seymour Papert. He was arguably the most influential educator of the past half century. It would be wise for us all to start thinking about what we each might do to build upon his mighty legacy.” Gary Stager, …
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 …
The MIT Media Lab is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Seymour Papert was one of the founders of the Media Lab and in this video created by LEGO, his influence on learning and technology for children. 30 years of collaboration towards empowering children to be creative thinkers from LEGO Foundation on Vimeo.
“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 …
Question by kid reporters: Some adults are afraid of computers, but kids love them. Why? Answer by Seymour Papert: “I don’t know the answer to that, but I think it is the most important question in the world. Children feel that computers are their thing. As children grow up, they’ll be doing everything in a …
This page from Cyberneticzoo.com tells the history of the mechanical Logo turtle.
“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 …