Week 11 Seymour Papert

Seymour Papert is not only a mathematician, but also an expert on helping children learn to work with computers and was the first to recognize how computers could revolutionize learning and education."Seymour Papert is rethinking how schools should work based on constructionist theories of learning. He also focuses on the impact of new technologies on learning in general and schools as a learning organization in particular.
He co-founded the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He invented the Logo Programing Language. It can be used to teach computer science concepts. Mr. Papert states, "as long as schools confine the technology to simply improving what they are doing rather than really changing the system, nothing very significant will happen." This is what Papert says about the way classrooms should change today, "Well I think that about 90 per cent of what we teach in mathematics in schoolrooms I’d throw out, it’s not really of any use in the modern world. Some of it was useful in an ancient world, like the 19th century or maybe the early 20th century and some of it was only useful as the way you could get kids to adopt a certain mathematical way of thinking when all you had to work with was pencil and paper. Think about the stuff that kids learn, knowing that a third is less than a half yeah that’s important, but everybody who’s worked in a kitchen knows that." To see on more on this recent interview, visit the website at http://www.abc.net.au/sundayprofile/stories/s1144341.htm.