If you haven't been exposed to Papert - check out some of his old videos from the 70s and 80s.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOf4EMN6-XA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOf4EMN6-XA</a> - One really powerful idea he had was ensuring that we stay "somatic" with our computer instruction - playing with abstract concepts in a physical way. Watch the video - he explains it better than I can.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMzojQFyMo0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMzojQFyMo0</a> - One from the 1970s - perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems like some of these computers they're using don't even have monitors, just control the turtle.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V-0KfBdWao" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V-0KfBdWao</a> - I also like this discussion - it reminds me that school is a prison for children, unless I work to elevate it beyond that.<p>I just kind of watch these periodically to remind me of the wonder that computing was back then.
> In my vision, space-age objects, in the form of small computers, will cross these cultural barriers to enter the private worlds of children everywhere. They will do so not as mere physical objects. This book is about how computers can be carriers of powerful ideas and of the seeds of cultural change, how they can help people form new relationships with knowledge that cut across the traditional lines separating humanities from sciences and knowledge of the self from both of these. It is about using computers to challenge current beliefs about who can understand what and at what age. It is about using computers to question standard assumptions in developmental psychology and in the psychology of aptitudes and attitudes. It is about whether personal computers and the cultures in which they are used will continue to be the creatures of "engineers" alone or whether we can construct intellectual environments in which people who today think of themselves as "humanists" will feel part of, not alienated from, the process of constructing computational cultures.<p>-- Mindstorms