Seymour Papert

Constructionism learning is an active process in which people actively construct knowledge from their experiences in the world. “People don’t get ideas, they make them.”

"Video games teach children what computers are beginning to teach adults--that some forms of learning are fast-pased, immensely compelling, and rewarding."

Seymour Papert teaches (since the 1960s) at the MIT media lab, and has concentrated his career on redefining how children learn. Papert and Marvin Minsky (The Society of the Mind), founded the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory . Papert and Minsky co-authored the seminal book: Perceptions in 1970. Papert was educated at Cambridge where he studied mathematics, and later went to the University of Geneva where he studied under Jean Piaget. Papert has authored a number of books, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, and his most recent book: The Connected Family.

Seymour Papert developed LOGO in the 1960s as a programming language for children. Papert believed that it wasn’t the fact that children were unable to think and understand difficult things, they simply needed an “intelligent machine” or something to get them over the learning curve. To this day Papert is considered a leading authority on how children learn, and spends his time developing cutting-edge technologies with which children can learn.

Papert writes his books as loving stories, vignettes, about his experiences with children both in and out of the classroom. His contributions to education and technology have enabled us to think a little bit differently about how we teach. One of the first things that comes to mind when one thinks about Papert is his complete joy in the act of learning, If we could transfer this joy into all classrooms they would be exciting, invigorating places of learning.

When asked what he believes the role of teachers in schools of the future will be he states: “To be able to work with children as co-learners. I think the factor that contributes most to the weaknesses of schools is that they aren’t good places for teachers to learn. Since we want kids to be good learners, the best thing we can give them is a good example, to let them see people learning. We don’t give them much chance because we are so busy having to teach” (online). This is a profound statement we are so busy trying to model teaching that we forget that we really should be modeling learning. We want our students to be learners, and thinkers, and they don’t see us doing much of that.

Today Papert is considered the world's foremost expert on how technology can provide new ways to learn. He has carried out educational projects on every continent, some of them in remote villages in developing countries.

He is a participant in developing the most influential cutting-edge opportunities for children to participate in the digital world. He serves on the advisory boards for MaMaMedia Inc. (whose founder, Idit Harel, was once a doctoral student of his at MIT) and of the LEGO Mindstorms product line (which was named after Papert's seminal book Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas).

Papert lives in Maine, where he has founded a small laboratory called the Learning Barn to develop methods of learning that are too far ahead of the times for large-scale implementation. He has been named distinguished professor by the University of Maine and is credited with inspiring the first initiative aimed at giving a personal computer to every student of a state.

He spends a large part of his time working in the Maine Youth Center in Portland, the state's facility for teenagers convicted of serious offenses.

Papert's contributions go beyond the field of education. He is a mathematician and is a cofounder with Marvin Minsky of the Artificial Intelligence Lab. at MIT and a founding faculty member of the MIT Media Lab, where he continues to work.

Publications

Perceptrons (1970)

Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980)

The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer (1992)

The Connected Family (1996)