Resources: Seymour Papert & Constructionism
Books and papers by Seymour Papert and resources on constructionism
Papert online
- DailyPapert – Archive of articles and multimedia of Seymour Papert curated by Gary Stager.
Books by Seymour Papert
Seymour Papert’s seminal books were written over a span of several decades and explore different aspects of constructionism. In short, the three books all explore constructionism but from different points of view, respectively, that of the learner, the teacher, and the parent.
- Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas – Constructionism explained as the way people naturally learn. In it, Papert explores how learning to program computers and gain mastery over them can influence how children learn everything else.
- The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School In The Age Of The Computer – Looking back on the first decade of computers in schools and what lies ahead.
- The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap – How parents can understand computers as thinking and learning partners for their children.
Constructionism
- The Eight Big Ideas of the Constructionist Learning Lab (PDF) – The father of constructionism explains what it looks like in this guide for laypeople. (Includes translations into a dozen different languages.)
- What’s the Big Idea? Toward a Pedagogy of Idea Power – One of Papert’s strongest and most recent papers.
- A Critique of Technocentrism in Thinking About the School of the Future – By Seymour Papert. The question of “will this or that technology change education” is not the right question.
- Climbing to Understanding: Lessons from an Experimental Learning Environment for Adjudicated Youth – By David Cavallo, Seymour Papert, and Gary Stager.
- Constructivism(s): Shared Roots, Crossed Paths, Multiple Legacies – A brilliant overview of constructivism and constructionism by Edith Ackermann.
- Computer as Material: Messing About With Time – By George Franz and Seymour Papert. A seminal work about how computers can be seen as a material for making powerful ideas come to life.
- Computer as Mudpie – By Seymour Papert. Connecting the natural learning instincts of children with what they can do as they program a computer.
- Epistemological Pluralism and the Revaluation of the Concrete – An incredibly powerful paper by Sherry Turkle and Seymour Papert about learning styles.
- Constructionism vs. Instructionism – A transcription of a talk by Seymour Papert explaining how these two models of education differ.
- Constructionism: New Technologies, New Purposes (video) – Mike Eisenberg‘s plenary address at the Constructionism 2012 Conference in Athens, Greece. Anyone interested in learning, emerging technology, creativity, the arts, science, or craft would be wise to watch this terrific presentation.
- Situating Constructionism – The first chapter from the book Constructionism, edited by Idit Harel and Seymour Papert.
- The Computer Clubhouse: Constructionism and Creativity in Youth Communities – by Yasmin Kafai, Kylie Peppler, and Robbin Chapman. Extensive resources and research on the positive impact on youth at over 100 after school computer centers in communities across the US.
- Constructionism in Practice: Designing, Thinking, and Learning in A Digital World – By Yasmin B. Kafai and Mitchel Resnick.