ETEC 510- Forum Post: Papert's Mindstorm
The following is a post that I made after reading a portion of Papert’s Mindstorm (1980). I have selected this particular post as an artifact of my learning because this learning event really solidified a number of critical points for me. Once again, I was confronted with the undeniable value of establishing and nourishing a constructivist approach in the classroom. I also came to see the importance of explicitly teaching my students to use their mistakes as learning opportunities.
Many elements of this course were quite an interesting mix of the past, present and future. Upon reading the assigned portion of Papert’s Mindstorm, I was flooded with childhood memories of time spent using LOGO myself in elementary school. Although written in 1980, much of what Papert wrote about was spot on or is still in the process of influencing technology development today. Here are my thoughts after reading some of Papert’s book:
This week I didn’t really need to familiarize myself with LOGO, I just needed to get reacquainted with it. In the early 80s, when I was a primary student I can remember when my school got its first computer. It was a clunky computer on a cart that got passed around based on a predetermined schedule to every classroom in the school. Most teachers used the computer as a center and we were always on it with a partner. The only program I remember using at that particular school was LOGO. The Papert reading made me smile. I vividly remember typing in some commands and seeing the turtle shoot across the screen for the first time as I gazed in wonder at what I had just made happen. I can recall learning all of the commands to build a picture like the house featured in the book. I can remember adjusting, rethinking, and exploring and being disappointed when our computer time was up. We even had assignments in our Math text books that required us to use LOGO. There was a picture of the LOGO Turtle in our text book too, and we so wanted that for our classroom! Little did I know at that time that I was constructing my own knowledge and embracing the vehicle for Piagetian learning as described by Papert. That personal story totally dates me, but maybe I am not the only one in the course that grew up using LOGO?
It is always interesting to read material such as this that was written in the past about what will happen in the future. We are now living in Papert’s future and it is amazing how many of his predictions have come true. One of the main things that stood out to me was his prediction that computers would soon cross cultural barriers and become the private property of people and that with this shift would come the power to exert change in the field of education. Papert argued that this shift would also eradicate the barrier put up by the social phenomenon of conservatism in education as computer and software providers would be able to sell their products (and ideas) in an open marketplace directly to the consumer instead of the ‘conservative bureaucracy’ (Papert, 1980, p.37).
Papert paints a picture of computers being used in schools in ways that do not live up to their potential. They are used for drill and practice and word processing, which certainly have benefits, but are not his ideal. Papert’s goal is for children to not just use computers, but be programmers of computers too. Have we really grown in this area in many classrooms? Are computers still being used to program the child or are we providing children with the opportunity to program the computer? Are computers being utilized to really allow students to take control of their own learning and construct their own meaning?
I think that Papert’s point about children learning ‘to use computers in a masterful way… can change the way they learn everything else’ (Papert, 1980, p. 8) is a very valuable one. This idea, coupled with the point that he makes in regard to the importance of students learning to isolate and correct bugs that keep programs from running smoothly have noteworthy implications for the field of education. If this was the norm in regard to how we view our own efforts to learn and demonstrate our understanding of things, there would likely be a considerable amount of us less afraid of being wrong (Papert, 1980). I always encourage my students to take risks, make mistakes, and seize the opportunity to learn from their mistakes, but by taking this computer approach, they may be better able to see the real life application of the need to debug along the path to knowledge. It also reminded me of the Google philosophy, that being the idea of moving their business forward by being in a constant state of beta. (Below, I have included an interesting TEDtalk about the 'living in beta' appraoch).
I agree with Papert that we need to teach students that there are a variety of styles of thinking and that they need to know how to think about thinking. I believe that students need these kind of self-awareness tools in their tool kits before they can really be comfortable and eventually thrive in constructive learning environments. This reading has made me realize that I need to be more aware in my own classroom of not just telling students that it is okay to make mistakes, but of showing them the value in debugging and making improvements based on those mistakes with real life examples. There is so much that we can learn from Papert.
References:
Papert, Seymour. (1980) Mindstorms :children, computers, and powerful ideas New York : Basic Books
This week I didn’t really need to familiarize myself with LOGO, I just needed to get reacquainted with it. In the early 80s, when I was a primary student I can remember when my school got its first computer. It was a clunky computer on a cart that got passed around based on a predetermined schedule to every classroom in the school. Most teachers used the computer as a center and we were always on it with a partner. The only program I remember using at that particular school was LOGO. The Papert reading made me smile. I vividly remember typing in some commands and seeing the turtle shoot across the screen for the first time as I gazed in wonder at what I had just made happen. I can recall learning all of the commands to build a picture like the house featured in the book. I can remember adjusting, rethinking, and exploring and being disappointed when our computer time was up. We even had assignments in our Math text books that required us to use LOGO. There was a picture of the LOGO Turtle in our text book too, and we so wanted that for our classroom! Little did I know at that time that I was constructing my own knowledge and embracing the vehicle for Piagetian learning as described by Papert. That personal story totally dates me, but maybe I am not the only one in the course that grew up using LOGO?
It is always interesting to read material such as this that was written in the past about what will happen in the future. We are now living in Papert’s future and it is amazing how many of his predictions have come true. One of the main things that stood out to me was his prediction that computers would soon cross cultural barriers and become the private property of people and that with this shift would come the power to exert change in the field of education. Papert argued that this shift would also eradicate the barrier put up by the social phenomenon of conservatism in education as computer and software providers would be able to sell their products (and ideas) in an open marketplace directly to the consumer instead of the ‘conservative bureaucracy’ (Papert, 1980, p.37).
Papert paints a picture of computers being used in schools in ways that do not live up to their potential. They are used for drill and practice and word processing, which certainly have benefits, but are not his ideal. Papert’s goal is for children to not just use computers, but be programmers of computers too. Have we really grown in this area in many classrooms? Are computers still being used to program the child or are we providing children with the opportunity to program the computer? Are computers being utilized to really allow students to take control of their own learning and construct their own meaning?
I think that Papert’s point about children learning ‘to use computers in a masterful way… can change the way they learn everything else’ (Papert, 1980, p. 8) is a very valuable one. This idea, coupled with the point that he makes in regard to the importance of students learning to isolate and correct bugs that keep programs from running smoothly have noteworthy implications for the field of education. If this was the norm in regard to how we view our own efforts to learn and demonstrate our understanding of things, there would likely be a considerable amount of us less afraid of being wrong (Papert, 1980). I always encourage my students to take risks, make mistakes, and seize the opportunity to learn from their mistakes, but by taking this computer approach, they may be better able to see the real life application of the need to debug along the path to knowledge. It also reminded me of the Google philosophy, that being the idea of moving their business forward by being in a constant state of beta. (Below, I have included an interesting TEDtalk about the 'living in beta' appraoch).
I agree with Papert that we need to teach students that there are a variety of styles of thinking and that they need to know how to think about thinking. I believe that students need these kind of self-awareness tools in their tool kits before they can really be comfortable and eventually thrive in constructive learning environments. This reading has made me realize that I need to be more aware in my own classroom of not just telling students that it is okay to make mistakes, but of showing them the value in debugging and making improvements based on those mistakes with real life examples. There is so much that we can learn from Papert.
References:
Papert, Seymour. (1980) Mindstorms :children, computers, and powerful ideas New York : Basic Books