I had the privilege of working with the extraordinary and visionary mathematician and educationalist, Seymour Papert. He has been one of the leading lights at MIT’s Media Lab for the last 50 years.
He came up with the idea of constructionism, based on the work of Jean Piaget, identifying that young people learn best by doing things, through experiential, hands-on learning; by solving real problems for themselves.
In the sixties he developed a programming language called Logo, which enables children to solve problems on computer screens and then went on to collaborate with Lego on their Mindstorms robotics projects.
He highlights how the education system fails to meet the dramatic changes in the ways we live and learn with the following example. If a Surgeon from the 19th century returned today, he would be bewildered by a modern operating theatre. If I teacher from the same time returned, he would find that nothing had changed.
Professor Papert suffered some serious physical injuries after being struck by a motorbike in Hanoi some years ago. His medical team are using some of the techniques he developed to help him re-learn some of the skills he lost.