Seymour Papert

Papert is amongst those who have argued that the microcomputer offers more than just a different medium for learning and that it offers new and qualitatively different possibilities as a learning environment (Light, Foot and Colbourn 1987).

Seymour Papert spent 5 years working with Jean Piaget focusing on how children become thinkers. In 1964 he moved to MIT and concerned himself with how to make machines think (Artificial Intelligence) and, together with Marvin Minsky, worked on a general theory of intelligence. The result was to give children "the best of computer science" (Papert, 1980), and so the concept of a new programming language was born, LOGO. The name denotes its symbolic and quantitative nature, enabling children to use powerful ideas from mathematics and science as instruments of personal power. And so to the creation of the LOGO Turtle ...