Word: papert
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Some educators do believe they see the outlines of change. Seymour Papert, professor of mathematics and education at M.I.T. and author of Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas, invented the computer language named Logo, with which children as young as six can program computers to design mathematical figures. Before they can do that, however, they must learn how to analyze a problem logically, step by step. "Getting a computer to do something," says Papert, "requires the underlying process to be described, on some level, with enough precision to be carried out by the machine." Charles P. Lecht, president...
...Logo's immediate result is it establishes a good first impression," says Seymour Papert, 59, the gray-bearded, South African-born M.I.T. mathematician whose theoretical work in the arcane field of artificial intelligence led to Logo. "It convinces the child that he can master the machine. It lets him say, 'I'm the boss.' " Says Dr. Sylvia Weir, a pediatrician who works with the Educational Computing Group at M.I.T: "People have usually considered the stupid thing in the classroom the child. Now the stupid thing, as it were, is the computer. And the child...
...instruct very young children, even Kemeny's BASIC is much too mathematical. Instead, more and more schools are turning to an innovative computer language called LOGO (from the Greek word for reason), developed by Seymour Papert and his colleagues at M.I.T. A mathematician who studied with the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, Papert has become something of a guru of the computer generation, predicting that the machines will revolutionize learning by taking much of the mystery out of mathematics, science and technology. Says he: "The computer can make the most abstract things concrete...
...widest benefits of the electronic revolution (unlike those of most revolutions) will accrue to the young. Seymour Papert, professor of mathematics and education at M.I.T., estimates that there will be 5 million private computers in people's homes and available to students within two years; by 1982, he predicts, 80% of upper-middle-class families will have computers "capable of playing important roles in the intellectual development of their children." Says California Author Robert Albrecht, a pioneer of electronic education: "In schools, computers will be more common than carousel slide projectors, movie projectors and tape recorders. They'll be used...
...which they help a southward-migrating gray whale make the necessary navigational and survival decisions to reach the Baja California breeding grounds. One effect of the computer, says Albrecht, is "to create worlds of If for children to explore." ¶ In Brookline, Mass., under the direction of Seymour Papert, a pilot study costing almost $1.5 million and financed by the National Science Foundation, is getting its first realistic testing with 48 sixth-graders who are learning to program computers for math, language, music making and, says Papert, "we like to believe, thinking skills...