Jul 9, 2013

The Life and Contributions of Seymour Papert: Inspiring video of a tribute panel, Interaction Design and Children Conference

Seymour Papert Tribute at #IDC13

I recently attended the Interaction Design and Children (IDC 2013) conference in NYC.  It was like a summer tech camp for grown-ups. We were busy all day and had interesting evening events scheduled, like a field trip to the New York Hall of Science and a screening of Flying Paper, an award-winning documentary. 

One of the highlights of IDC 2013 was a panel that gave tribute to the life and contributions of Seymour Papert.  Well ahead of his time, Seymour Papert imagined a world in which children would generate their own computer programs, make awesome robots, collaborate with others, create, and learn. 

I encourage you to take some time and watch the video.


Seymour Papert Tribute Panel from IDC2013 Conference on Vimeo.



The following information is from the description of the video:

"Seymour Papert was one of the key pioneers of interaction design for children, merging the constructivist ideas of Jean Piaget and cutting-edge technological advances in computer programming and cybernetics..generating well-known designs such as the Logo programming language and the Lego Mindstorms robotics kits.  This work, which in the beginning was done in collaboration with many colleagues at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, Bolt, Beranek and Newman, and Atari Research Labs, has been highly influential for decades."

"Paulo Blikstein from Stanford University hosted a panel at the Interaction Design and Children (IDC 2013) conference on the impact of Seymour Papert's research on the past, present, and future of child-computer interaction.  The purpose of this pane is to investigate current trends, designs, and theoretical advances in the IDC community in light of the groundbreaking work of Papert and his close collaborators, recapitulate the history of this early work in IDC, and imagine future scenarios for IDC research."

Panelists:
Allison Druin, University of Maryland
Edith Ackermann, MIT
Mike Eisenberg, University of Colorado
Mitch Resnick, MIT
Uri Wilensky, Northwestern University

More posts to come soon!

RELATED
IDC 2013 Website - an archive of treasures
MIT Media Lab
Human-Computer Interaction Lab: Children as Design Partners






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