Post #3

Okay, so I understood the first half of this book. After chapter 5 I got really lost, especially when the author started talking about theorists. The book jumps from LOGO’s and talking about computers to Piaget and Newton’s Laws of motion, then back to dynaturtles. I thought if I read Chapter 5 two or three times I would eventually understand or at least grasp part of it, but after reading it four times, I am still lost. So I moved on to Chapter 6 where the author talks about powerful ideas. And again the author starts talking about physics and Galileo, so as you can guess, I am lost. Then I begin to understand the chapter because the author goes back to math concepts, talking about finding the circumference of the earth by finding the radius. By the end of chapter 6 Seymour Papert continues with literacy of computers? I tried to continue reading, but Chapter 7 maintains his writing about Piaget and artificial intelligence. The author does explain in this chapter that the theme of the book has been the idea of exploiting a role by giving children access to computer cultures. And finally Chapter 8 discusses the different societies of the world and how they can be different of similar to school environments. Having different levels of learners and learning in different environments can affect learning. The images that these environments express can also have an impact on the people looking in, positive and negative impact.
Overall, I think this is an interesting book, I wish I would have had more time to read it and understand it. I believe the book became very complicated by the author and needed more clarification. Hopefully in the future I will pick this book back up and re-read it to better understand it

Post #2

The end of chapter three explained how students can make objects other than squares and triangles. Students discovered how to make flowers, a garden, and birds. Chapter four began by introducing ‘debugging’ and the importance of students learning how to fix or create what they want through turtle geometry. And how students can create stick figures through turtle geometry, but how do you create juggling in turtle geometry? First you need to be able to explain how to juggle in your own terms, and then translate it into LOGO’s. Once into LOGO’s language “tossright” and “tossleft,” make sense. Chapter five is very complete and discusses mathetic principles of Piaget, Newton’s laws of motions, Euclid’s points, Aristotelian ideas, and Einstein. And then the chapter describes dynaturtles, velocity turtles, and acceleration turtles. To having the ability to have multiple Turtles in the LOGO’s program becomes even more complex. Chapter five is to complex with their explanations about “microworlds.” I think it is something that I will need to re-read a few times to understand, better.

Post 1-Mindstorms

In the first two and a half chapters of this book the author, Seymour Papert, discusses computers, how they will change over time, and how computers have an impact on students. The author describes how computers have changed over time and how computers will continue to change. There is a possibility that everyone in the near future will have a computer or even more than one (which seems to be happening now). Computers are used for many different jobs and many different tasks. Teachers can also use computers in classrooms to help students practice exercises of their learning level, provide feedback, and then dispense the information. However, there are other types of computer culture, one is called LOGO. In the LOGO program, the student is in control. The LOGO program can be connected to Piaget through his concepts of concrete and formal thinking. The LOGO program has powerful ideas from physics, mathematics, and linguistics intertwined to help the player learn in a natural manner. As the students learn the program and move in the LOGO program children are challenging their own thinking and programming the computer to make more complex actions.
Students for many years and many years to come have been afraid of math and science because of numbers, equations, and letters. The LOGOs program was designed to helped students like math and science subjects. LOGOs starts with a turtle and the student learn how to move the turtle as they would move. For example: if the students want to make a square the students they either need to think in their heads or get out of their chairs and walk in a square then decide how they tell the turtle (programming) where to move; TO SQUARE, FORWARD 100, RIGHT 90, FORWARD 100, RIGHT 90, FORWARD 100, RIGHT 90, FORWARD 100, END. This type of program is called TURTLE GEOMETRY, it involves computations. The way the students give the turtle commands, like above, is called TURTLE TALK. Students are encouraged to move their bodies as the Turtle on the screen, to better understand the pattern. As students progress in the program they have the ability to draw circles, triangles, houses, etc.
There is a very important point to make in the LOGO program, when students make mistakes they are not criticized, instead they are encouraged to “debug” or fix the problem. LOGO also connects rhythm, movement, and navigation skills needed for everyday life.
So far, this book is very interesting and just skimming through the rest of the book it seems it gets extremely complex.