Audrey Watters
The Monsters of Education Technology
For Kay, the DynaBook was meant to help build capacity so that children (and adults too) would create their own interactive learning tools. The DynaBook was not simply about a new piece of hardware or new software, but about a new literacy, a new way of teaching and learning. And that remains largely unrealized.
Note: prgrm or b prgrammed
Kay cites one of Papert’s best-known lines in his manifesto: “should the computer program the kid or should the kid program the computer?”
Logo – and particularly the Turtle that the language became most synonymous with – helped give students an embodied understanding of mathematics. There was a Turtle robot and later a Turtle graphic on the screen.
Computers, argued Papert, should unlock children’s “powerful ideas.” That’s the subtitle to his 1980 book Mindstorms,
Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. Basic Books. 1980.