papert

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how is making
thinking?

growing concerns

Who else thinks like this?

Seymour Papert - Professor MIT Media Lab (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Mathematician / computer scientist and pioneer of artificial intelligence.

The creator of Logo - a playful, programmable robotic vehicle to allow children to think and solve problems in new ways.

Sherry Turkle quotes from Papert’s first book 'Mindstorms' (publ. 1980):
"In his book ‘Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas’ Seymour Papert writes of falling in love with the gears of a toy car that his father gave him when he was two. [He] fell in love with the gears and through them fell in love with science…if anyone had tried to test him to determine what was happening as his curiosity was expanding, they would have found nothing to measure.
The story of Papert's gears makes plain that finding nothing to measure does not mean that nothing is going on. Too often, if we can't formulate a test, we give up on a method or we give up on a child."

In his later book ‘The Children’s Machine’ (publ. 1993) he talks about how methods of teaching have not changed for a hundred years, but with the new “knowledge machine”, (referring to personal computers and the internet - not then generally available), education would change dramatically in the foreseeable future.

He predicted strong resistance to change by traditionalists, and has been critical of the limitations inherent in the current educational system. 25 years later these changes have not yet taken place, and we are still in the phase he described of “resistance to change” - with a conflict raging between a tightly drawn curriculum which can be tested, as opposed his proposal of an “emergently planned” method which allows “adaptive responses”.

Failures of the 1960’s & 70’s ‘progressive movement’ in education (open-ended, child centred, constructivist education) are often used to justify the current curriculum and testing system. He believes that this failure was due to lack of the right tools at the time to achieve those aims, and that computers and the internet are opportunities to rethink those methods towards a more personally self-directed type of education.
who is this? > Seymour Papert
resource link > Seymour Papert: Mindstorms - Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas

resource link > Seymour Papert: The Children’s Machine

what do we mean - thinking by making?

• there is special knowledge and understanding to be gained by making things

• childhood plays a vital part in this innovative process

a historical perspective

• evidence from the past

• art and decoration

• observation, trial and error

• origins of maths
• patterns and geometry

facing the future

• living in a digital age

• how can this be creative?