Paulo Blikstein from Stanford University will be hosting a panel on the impact of Seymour Papert’s research on the past, present, and future of child-computer interaction. The panelists will be:
- Allison Druin, University of Maryland
- Edith Ackermann, MIT
- Mike Eisenberg, University of Colorado
- Mitch Resnick, MIT
- Uri Wilensky, Northwestern University
Seymour Papert was one of key pioneers of interaction design for children, merging the constructivist ideas of Jean Piaget and cutting-edge technological advances in computer programming and cybernetics and 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. The purpose of this panel 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.
