Friday, June 22, 2018

Book Review Part III: Mindstorms, by Seymour Papert. Final Thoughts



Summarizing the last chapters of his book, Papert first connects the creation of LOGO with Piaget’s thinking about learning and how children learn, and the development of Artificial Intelligence and the need for breaking knowledge into bite-sized, communicable chunks (making computers capable of “learning”, as well as students).   LOGO’s creation was about making learning meaningful and accessible to students.

Papert goes on to discuss potential impacts of the computer on our future learning society, including an Afterward offering some final insights.  There are many, many thoughts developed in these sections, but I will choose 2 quotes to summarize.  “The LOGO culture enriches and facilitates the interaction between all participants and offers opportunities for more articulate, effective, and honest teaching relationships.” 


The second quote shares a hope for future education, “Seeing ideas from computer science not only as instruments of explanation of how learning and thinking… work, but also as instruments of change that might alter, and possibly improve, the way people learn and think.”  Powerful words to contemplate as educators.

To complete my role as reviewer, I found the sections of the book where Papert explained LOGO and gave examples of students’ learning to be the most easily accessible and exciting for the possibilities in my own classroom.  Some of the other sections became heavy and required an effort to keep reading, in anticipation of applications I can use to impact my own teaching.  Overall, I think Papert offers strong arguments for the need for change in education.  Though much of his book is related to math and science, its application is for the broader world of schools and learning.

  

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