<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>SAD NEWS: Seymour Papert</TITLE>
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<DIV>abrçs, lisbeth</DIV>
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<DIV><B>Subject:</B> SAD NEWS: Seymour Papert</DIV></DIV></DIV>
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<DIV>From MIT News [On Campus and Around the World], Monday, August 1, 2106.
See</DIV>
<DIV>http://news.mit.edu/2016/seymour-papert-pioneer-of-constructionist-l<SPAN></SPAN>earning-dies-0801</DIV>
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<DIV><B>Professor Emeritus Seymour Papert, pioneer of constructionist learning,
dies at 88</B><BR></DIV>
<DIV>World-renowned mathematician, learning theorist, and educational-technology
visionary was a founding faculty member of the MIT Media Lab.</DIV>
<DIV><BR>Seymour Papert, whose ideas and inventions transformed how millions of
children around the world create and learn, died Sunday at his home in East Blue
Hill, Maine. He was 88.<BR><BR>Papert's career traversed a trio of influential
movements: child development, artificial intelligence, and educational
technologies. Based on his insights into children's thinking and learning,
Papert recognized that computers could be used not just to deliver information
and instruction, but also to empower children to experiment, explore, and
express themselves. The central tenet of his Constructionist theory of learning
is that people build knowledge most effectively when they are actively engaged
in constructing things in the world. As early as 1968, Papert introduced the
idea that computer programming and debugging can provide children a way to think
about their own thinking and learn about their own learning.<BR><BR>"With a mind
of extraordinary range and creativity, Seymour Papert helped revolutionize at
least three fields, from the study of how children make sense of the world, to
the development of artificial intelligence, to the rich intersection of
technology and learning," says MIT President L. Rafael Reif. "The stamp he left
on MIT is profound. Today, as MIT continues to expand its reach and deepen its
work in digital learning, I am particularly grateful for Seymour's
groundbreaking vision, and we hope to build on his ideas to open doors to
learners of all ages, around the world."<BR><BR>Papert's life straddled several
continents. He was born in 1928 in Pretoria, South Africa, and went on to study
at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, where he earned a BA in
philosophy in 1949, followed by a PhD in mathematics three years later. He was a
leading anti-apartheid activist throughout his university years.<BR><BR>Papert's
studies then took him overseas - first to Cambridge University in England from
1954-1958, where he focused on math research, earning his second PhD, then to
the University of Geneva, where he worked with Swiss philosopher and
psychologist Jean Piaget, whose theories about the ways children make sense of
the world changed Papert's view of children and learning.<BR><BR>From
Switzerland, Papert came to the U.S., joining MIT as a research associate in
1963. Four years later, he became a professor of applied mathematics, and
shortly after was appointed co-director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab
(which later evolved into the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory, or CSAIL) by its founding director Professor Marvin Minsky.
Together, they wrote the 1969 book, "Perceptrons," which marked a turning point
in the field of artificial intelligence.<BR><BR>In 1985, Papert and Minsky
joined former MIT President Jerome Wiesner and MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte
to become founding faculty members of the MIT Media Lab, where Papert led the
Epistemology and Learning research group.<BR></DIV>
<DIV>"Seymour often talked poetically, sometimes in riddles, like his famed
phrase, 'you cannot think about thinking without thinking about thinking about
something,'" says Negroponte, the Media Lab's co-founder and first director. "He
did not follow rules or run by anybody else's clock. I would say, in Papertian
style, Seymour never needed to do what he said because when he said what he did,
it was better."</DIV>
<DIV><BR>Papert was among the first to recognize the revolutionary potential of
computers in education. In the late 1960s, at a time when computers still cost
hundreds of thousands of dollars, Papert came up with the idea for Logo, the
first programming language for children. Children used Logo to program the
movements of a "turtle" - either in the form of a small mechanical robot or a
graphic object on the computer screen. In his seminal book "Mindstorms:
Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas" (1980), Papert argued against "the
computer being used to program the child." He presented an alternative approach
in which "the child programs the computer and, in doing so, both acquires a
sense of mastery over a piece of the most modern and powerful technology and
establishes an intimate contact with some of the deepest ideas from science,
from mathematics, and from the art of intellectual model building."</DIV>
<DIV><BR>In collaboration with Sherry Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé
Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, Papert
explored how childhood objects have a deep influence on how and what children
learn. In "Mindstorms," Papert explained how he "fell in love with gears" as a
child, and how he hoped to "turn computers into instruments flexible enough so
that many children can each create for themselves something like what the gears
were for me."<BR><BR>Papert was the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Education
at MIT from 1974-1981. In 1985, he began a long and productive collaboration
with the LEGO company, one of the first and largest corporate sponsors of the
Media Lab. Papert's ideas served as an inspiration for the LEGO Mindstorms
robotics kit, which was named after his 1980 book. In 1989, the LEGO company
endowed a chair at the Media Lab, and Papert became the first LEGO Professor of
Learning Research. In 1998, after Papert became professor emeritus, the name of
the professorship was modified, in his honor, to the LEGO Papert Professorship
of Learning Research. The professorship was passed on to Papert's former student
and long-time collaborator, Mitchel Resnick, who continues to hold the chair
today.<BR><BR>"For so many of us, Seymour fundamentally changed the way we think
about learning, the way we think about children, and the way we think about
technology," says Resnick, who heads the Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten
research group.<BR><BR>In the late 1990s, Papert moved to Maine and continued
his work with young people there, establishing the Learning Barn and the Seymour
Papert Institute in 1999. He also set up a Learning Lab at the Maine Youth
Center, where he worked to engage and inspire troubled youths who had received
little support at home or school, and were grappling with drugs, alcohol, anger,
or psychological problems. He was also integral to a Maine initiative requiring
laptops for all 7th and 8th graders. Following the Maine initiative, Papert
joined Negroponte and Alan Kay in 2004 to create the non-profit One Laptop per
Child (OLPC), which produced and distributed low-cost, low-power, rugged laptops
to the world's poorest children. The organization produced more than 3 million
laptops, reaching children in more than 40 countries. "Each of the laptops has
Seymour inside," says Negroponte.<BR><BR>Papert's work inspired generations of
educators and researchers around the world. He received numerous awards,
including a Guggenheim fellowship in 1980, a Marconi International fellowship in
1981, and the Smithsonian Award from Computerworld in 1997. In 2001, Newsweek
named him "one of the nation's 10 top innovators in education."<BR><BR>"Papert
made everyone around him smarter - from children to colleagues - by encouraging
people to focus on the big picture and zero in on the powerful ideas," says
CSAIL's Patrick Winston, who took over as director of the AI Lab in
1972.<BR><BR>In addition to "Mindstorms," Papert was the author of "The
Children's Machine" (1993) and "The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital
Generation Gap" (1996). As an emeritus professor, Papert continued to write many
articles and advise governments around the world on technology-based education.
In 2006, while in Vietnam for a conference on mathematics education, he suffered
a serious brain injury when struck by a motor scooter in Hanoi.<BR><BR>Papert is
survived by his wife of 24 years, Suzanne Massie, a Russia scholar with whom he
collaborated on the Learning Barn and many international projects; his daughter,
Artemis Papert; three stepchildren, Robert Massie IV, Susanna Massie Thomas, and
Elizabeth Massie; and two siblings, Alan Papert and Joan Papert. He was
previously married to Dona Strauss, Androula Christofides Henriques, and Sherry
Turkle.<BR><BR>The Media Lab will host a celebration of the life and work of
Seymour Papert in the coming months.</DIV>
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