October 18, 2021
“Our school systems are being strangled by the cost of this curious epidemic of learning disability.” Seymour Papert From Papert, S., March 16, 2000. Millennial Lecture at the Muskie Archives.
Logo
“School of the Future” (1986)
In 1986, the MIT Media Lab made a laserdisc describing their research groups and mission. This video describes Seymour Papert’s Learning Research Group’s work at the Hennigan (middle) School in Boston. View the entire laser disc video at the Internet Archive. Transcript Narrator: (00:15)Learning Research Group’s School of the future project takes place in a …
Outtakes from Seymour Papert’s Squeakers DVD Interview
This interview appears to have been recorded for the 2002 Squeakers documentary DVD by a team from Ball State University. Transcription attached.
The Lessons of Logo
The Lessons of Logo Teaching and Computers Magazine “The Magazine for Teachers of the 1990s” March/April 1990 – Volume 7, Number 5 Orlando, L. C. (1990). The Lessons of Logo. Teaching and Computing, 7(5), 20-25. Teaching and Computers Lessons of Logo 1990 searchable It was almost 25 years ago that Logo, the first programming language …
February 29, 2020 – Happy Birthday Seymour!
“When people claim that my vision of education does away with teachers, I get very upset. That turns on its head what I’ve been trying to say. Schools give teachers very little opportunity to teach. They spend most of their time brainwashing or forcing children to do rote activities nobody believes in. In the kind of learning environment I envision, teachers can really teach.” Greth, C. V. (2983). Seymour Papert on Education and Language. Atari Connection (Fall 1983), 22-25. Retrieved from https://ia801708.us.archive.org/9/items/Atari_Connection_Volume_3_Number_3_1983-09_Atari_US/Atari_Connection_Volume_3_Number_3_1983-09_Atari_US_text.pdf
January 17, 2017
Seymour Papert makes several profound points in this very short clip from a 1991 conference keynote. The complete video, along with its transcript may be found here. “Another way of describing what school does to children is infantilizing them, treating them like children so to speak. Now, one’s got to be careful playing with that …
Seymour Papert on Logo
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 …
Papert Excerpt from MIT Media Lab Videodisc
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 …
May 1, 2014
“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 …
April 28, 2014
“Approaching Logo as an idea in development rather than a fixed thing to be judged has placed me in a third position in relation to debates between people who think Logo is great and those who think it has “failed.” Just as Logo encourages children to see bugs as positive things to think about, so …