Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas

This book has some five star parts and some four star parts.

The five star parts are where Papert gets into the philosophy that drove the creation of LOGO - his thoughts about how learning occurs, why it's important to empower children to think about their own thinking, and his vision for a "learning society." It reads like a manifesto and goes so much past "hey, let's put computers in schools, it'll be great." He also showed me the power of thinking about environments as sources of "raw materials" for learning. There's certainly a lot more to chew on in these parts, and I need to think more and read it again.

The four star parts, for me, are anecdotes about how LOGO works towards reaching his goals. They're fun but not so inspirational.

After reading the intro, you'll think this was written in 2010 - not 1980! Why and how did these ideas get lost? Why don't school incorporate these ideas as we launch computer science to all US schools? "Why?," I ask.

Interesting ideas about how computers could be used to help children learn math the way they learn to speak. Computers "speak" math natively, and also provide models for thinking about thinking.