Teach Programming

Sunday reflection:

“My basic idea is that programming is the most powerful medium of developing the sophisticated and rigorous thinking needed for mathematics, for grammar, for physics, for statistics, for all the 'hard' subjects.... In short, I believe more than ever that programming should be a key part of the intellectual development of people growing up.”

— Seymour Papert

Video Games Versus Boredom

Sunday reflection:

“Every maker of video games knows something that the makers of curriculum don't seem to understand. You'll never see a video game being advertised as being easy. Kids who do not like school will tell you it's not because it's too hard. It's because it's boring.”

— Seymour Papert

Ideas... The Stuff of Math

Seymour Papert via Wikipedia

Math teacher David Wees today posted on 8 ideas pertinent to math as taken from Seymour Papert's 1980 work "Mindstorms":

http://davidwees.com/content/powerful-ideas-math

He also tweeted a link to this 4-minute clip of Papert explaining that math education too often deals with rote skills, and not IDEAS:



Good stuff!

Pointing Out Papert

MathMama had a post today on one of those names, Seymour Papert, who I've long heard about, but never gotten around to reading... I think she has stimulated me to put him in the reading queue though; if you're not already familiar with him check out her post and the several links she includes:

http://mathmamawrites.blogspot.com/2011/06/seymour-papert.html