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Seymour Papert has died

media.mit.edu

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Re: Seymour Papert has died

#81

Post by jkestner »

mcphage wrote: post #14
Tomte wrote: post #2

Just yesterday I finished "Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams" by Resnick who builds heavily upon Papert's work. Mindstorms is on my backlog. I have fond recollections about my first contact with Turtles. It didn't shape me or anything like that, but I'd like to take Logo out again and play with it. Is there a recommended modernish Logo (running on Windows), or should I simply go to Processing?

> Just yesterday I finished "Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams" Oh, that's a great book.

Yes! A great read even if you don't have a CS degree. It helped me get the emergent behavior bug, the same way NewtonScript made OOP click for me.

The descendents of his multi-turtle Logo variant, StarLogo, are still going, including online. http://web.mit.edu/mitstep/projects/starlogo-tng/learn.html http://www.slnova.org

Re: Seymour Papert has died

#82

Post by schoen »

gbin wrote: post #23

Python has a "logo inspired" turtle in the standard lib: https://docs.python.org/3.5/library/turtle.html We played with it with my son and it brought back memories from the 80s when the French government made a big push on Logo in the schools.

Wow, nice! Thanks for mentioning it.

Re: Seymour Papert has died

#84

Post by dopamean »

jkestner wrote: post #75
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #68

In 200x, when I was in 4th grade, my teacher said that that day, we would be learning some programming. We were strictly a Mac school, and Scratch wasn't as well known at the time, so the language and environment we learned was Terrapin Logo. There's nothing like looking at the screen and seeing something that you made come to life for the first time. And there's nothing quite like being given a problem that seems im…

You youths! I had a similar introduction to Logo, on an Apple ][ at a computer day camp in the summer of 198x. We programmers tend to love learning the shiny new languages, but it's thanks to the enduring idea behind this language that many of us acquired the love. I strive to build something as lasting. Papert on the turtle, children and the physical version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTd3N5Oj2jk

I used Logo on an Apple in the early 90s. I dont recall what model it was though.

Re: Seymour Papert has died

#85

Post by thomasrynne »

pfooti wrote: post #35
wallflower wrote: post #28

RIP, Seymour Papert. Scratch is the spiritual successor to Logo. As Scratch becomes more and more popular, it has been sad to say that there is a tension between the spirit of Scratch and commercialization. Scratch is all about exploration and making mistakes and experiential learning. However, there is a deluge of companies who are trying to create curriculums for Scratch that fit into the traditional School lesson…

While I'm a bit bummed about the general commercialization of some elements of Scratch, I think it's fair to say that there is an encouraging amount of work being done in parallel with Scratch that keeps us from living in a monoculture of blocks. As examples, the blockly [0] library makes it easier for devs to build blocks-based programming interfaces for a lot of systems. It's been used in App Inventor for building…

I have seen Boxer referenced and it seems like a great idea. Did it lead to something else and if not is there a good reason. I'd like to know more about it but the name makes it hard to search for. Is there a way to run it?

Re: Seymour Papert has died

#86

Post by mattkevan »

A sad day. My first programming experiences were with Logo, before I even realised that was what it was.

In primary school we had a robot turtle attached to a BBC Micro with a long cable which trundled around the floor drawing wonky shapes. At the time it was one of the most amazing things I'd seen - and was probably similar to, if not exactly the same as this: http://www.classicacorn.freeuk.com/8bit_focus/logo/logo.html

Later, in secondary school, I remember amazing our teacher by getting the Acorn Archimedes we had to produce multicoloured spirograph-like patterns.

Being able to type something - and then the computer actually going and doing it (or not) was both frustrating and fantastic, and left me with a lifelong interest in programming and learning new stuff.

Thank you Seymour.

Re: Seymour Papert has died

#88

Post by justincormack »

zalmoxes wrote: post #38

Anyone interested in educational technology should read Mindstorms and Powerful Ideas. Papert described how technology should be used in schools and also predicted most issues and trends with education today. Papert work is also present in most educational/programming toys we see today - Scratch, Kibo http://kinderlabrobotics.com/kibo/ , LittleBits, LEGO Mindstorms all owe their roots to Paperts ideas. http://worrydr…

Absolutely, Mindstorms is one of the best books about learning ever written. Everyone should read it. Buy it now!
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