Remembering A Thinker Who Thought About Thinking

Seymour Papert with LEGO Mindstorms robotics kits, which were named in recognition of Papert's seminal book, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. Seymour Papert with LEGO Mindstorms robotics kits, which were named in recognition of Papert's seminal book, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. The field of educational technology is mourning a visionary whose work was considered 50 years ahead of its time. Seymour Papert, who died July 31 at age 88, was a mathematician and computer scientist who spent decades at MIT. "Seymour was one of the very first people to recognize that new computer technologies could be used by kids to create things in new ways and express themselves," Mitchel Resnick, a professor of learning research at MIT and a longtime colleague and friend, told NPR Ed. "It's amazing that Seymour was thinking these ideas in the 1960s," Resnick adds, "when computers cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but he foresaw the day that every child would have access to a computer." The great theme of Papert's work and life was the nature of intelligence, or what he called thinking about thinking.