Seymour Papert Mindstorms

Seymour Papert's ideas about learning ca. 1980: with Logo and his book, Mindstorms, he hoped that programming would help kids learn think in terms of cyclical optimization, basically:

http://www-tech.mit.edu/V121/N27/col27joel.27c.html:
 * LOGO, I learned, is not about drawing pictures. Nor is it about computer programming, though that is superficially its interface. LOGO, it turns out, is meant to give kids an environment in which to learn how to think procedurally. "Drawing" is just the feedback that indicates whether the procedures are behaving as expected, and allows kids to then "debug" their thinking. If the turtle doesn’t do what you want, think about breaking the problem into smaller chunks to isolate where the problem is. If you can’t visualize what the turtle is doing, imagine yourself in the turtle’s place and experience what the turtle is experiencing.


 * Papert’s powerful idea is to apply "debugging" to all areas of learning so that "right or wrong" is transformed into a continuous process of improvement. The goal is to debug your learning process in general so that you’ll never fear learning anything in particular. Break the problem into pieces. Change your perspective to grasp the situation. I didn’t really learn these concepts until I was a student at MIT.

The writer here goes on to say it didn't work for him. :)

José Armando Valente portrayed the cycle as "description - execution - reflection - debugging - description."

Other links:


 * http://caesar.elte.hu/~eurologo/lectures/valente.htm
 * http://www.erzwiss.uni-hamburg.de/Sonstiges/Logo/logofaqx.htm#FAQ13
 * http://www.epicent.com/software/products/pages/l/logo.html
 * http://www.convergemag.com/Publications/CNVGFeb99/inclose/inclose.shtm