LOGO-L> Re: Does Easy Do It? Children, Games, and Learning by
Brian Harvey
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Reply-To: b...@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
"Gary S. Stager" <gst...@pepperdine.edu> writes:
>I don't think you should read too much into Seymour's overglamorizing of
>commercial forces.
This would be okay if he only said it once, but it seems to be all he does
say any more -- that the world will be saved by greedy rich bastards.
I'm afraid we have to acknowledge that Seymour, despite being still a
brilliant person, has sold out, in the strict technical sense of the term.
He has changed his position for money.
That doesn't mean every commercial venture is bad, and it *certainly* doesn't
mean that everything in a school is good.
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Gary S. Stager
As I stated in my initial response, I think that there are MUCH greater
enemies of children learning than Seymour Papert.
As far as I know, Papert is retired from MIT and no longer "sniffing
around" for money from the "likes of Nintendo." Exactly who should fund
basic educational research that bucks the entrenched instructionist
school industry?
It used to be all the rage to attack the defense contractors, probably
with good cause, but come on... Nintendo? They actually like children (as
opposed to textbook publishers and the two companies that now control ALL
of educational software development and distribution). The MIT Media Lab
does not need me to defend them, but their funding is non-proprietary.
They promise the donors nothing for their contributions, just the ability
to hang around and possibly learn something.
I spend way too many hours trying to keep Logo visible and the publishers
of it alive in an extremely hostile educational and corporate
marketplace.
Our naivete as a community has allowed inferior products like Hyperstudio
to make of offering constructionism and the learner construction of
knowledge in an open-ended environment while racking up sales of $100+
million per year. Yeah, I know that Brian is going to say that Logo
should be free, but our society does not value that which is free. While
Roger Wagner went door to door evangelizing Hyperstudio, we sat here
arguing about lexical vs. dymanic scope. The fact that we as a movement
lacked the will, chutzpah or creativity to get our message out leads us
perilously close to extinction.
The business of school and many of the businesses dependent on schools
are corrupt and school itself is pretty awful for the kids I know.
-=Gary
>Brian Harvey wrote:
>
>> "Gary S. Stager" <gst...@pepperdine.edu> writes:
>> >I don't think you should read too much into Seymour's overglamorizing of
>> >commercial forces.
>>
>> This would be okay if he only said it once, but it seems to be all he does
>> say any more -- that the world will be saved by greedy rich bastards.
>> I'm afraid we have to acknowledge that Seymour, despite being still a
>> brilliant person, has sold out, in the strict technical sense of the term.
>> He has changed his position for money.
>>
>> That doesn't mean every commercial venture is bad, and it *certainly*
doesn't
>> mean that everything in a school is good.
>
>-----------------------------
>
>I agree with Brian.
>
>I think that each commercial game and each new educational program
>developed for
>school ought to be evaluated on its merits. That's hard work. The difference
>between Ken's workshop report article and Seymour's article was that the
>participants in Ken's workshop were attempting a concrete analysis of the
>good/bad aspects of games whereas Seymour was just making sweeping
>generalisations (school curriculum is bad / educational software is bad;
>commercial games are good). He uses language and metaphor well but is
>intellectually lazy when it comes down to the hard work of concrete analysis.
>Then he has a pious bit at the end about how his ideas will be met by
>resistance
>from vested interests (textbook and educational game designers) when it is
>pretty
>obvious that he is sniffing around for more research funding from the
>likes of
>Nintendo. I'd agree that some good things have come out of that (eg. LEGO
>logo
>etc.) but Seymour's assertion that School is corrupt and Commerce isn't, as a
>generalisation, stinks.
>-- Bill Kerr
Gary S. Stager
educational publishing industry care very little about the welfare of
children? One of the TV magazine shows here in the U.S. last night
exposed the plethora of errors, phony authors and questionable business
practices of textbook publishers. The textbook industry in the US
generates a billion+ dollars more revenue than trade books per year.
The consolidation and raise to the bottom taking place in the educational
software industry is even more disconcerting.
Bill Kerr
-----------------------------
I agree with Brian.
Gary Frederick
I would have said more but was busy homeschooling.
However, us Gary's like to stick together and when "Gary S. Stager" wrote:
<PS: Does anyone deny that the motives and actions of (most of) the
educational publishing industry care very little about the welfare of
children?> I decided to chime in.
ding, ding, ding
Anyone else play with Oregon Trail 3rd Edition on DVD?
Need I say more?
Gary
--
gary.fr...@jsoft.com
Husband to Susan, Father to Elizabeth
Terrapin Station Homeschool
... computers, homeschooling, Family and God.
<http://www.jsoft.com>
><> ><> ><>
Turtles of the world unite, our day is coming,
slowly...
Bill Kerr
Lori...@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 4/3/99 6:10:40 PM Mountain Standard Time,
> ke...@senet.com.au writes:
>
> << I think that each commercial game and each new educational program
> developed for
> school ought to be evaluated on its merits. That's hard work. >>
>
> Yes, and does anyone else on this list feel pressure from administrators,
> etc., to get top-of-the-line equipment and "bells-and-whistles" software? My
> administrator has been great (the bottom line is that she trusts my
> judgement, which is a wonderful thing), but there is a constant question as
> to WHY we would still be using Windows 3.11, teaching word processing with
> Works 3.0, etc...
>
> Anyone care to go off on this particular tangent?
>
> Lori
I'm sending Lori's message to me to the list / newsgroup since it was clearly
intended for that destination
-- Bill Kerr
Jim Muller
"More than 100 elementary school students will face off next Saturday in
Richardson in a battle of the brains: a chess championship sponsored by the
Dallas Area Chess-in-the-Schools and the University of Texas at Dallas. The
winning sixth grader will receive a four-year scholarship to UTD. The goal
of the chess program is to bring mind games to students of economically and
socially disadvantages backgrounds in order to improve school performance.
It's truly a smart idea."
Some other game trivia...
John Von Neumann, architect of the programmable computer way back when, was
also renowned for his work on game theory and design. His work is one of the
reasons the course is taught in military command and war colleges along with
chess. From these courses and practice in strategic thinking have come a
wide range of advanced AI simulations.
Maybe educational software designers need to look into that (:>)
Regards...Jim
Bill Kerr
"Gary S. Stager" wrote:
> As I stated in my initial response, I think that there are MUCH greater
> enemies of children learning than Seymour Papert.
That's true but the discussion doesn't finish there. Seymour is into
image building in a fairly serious way IMO, he promotes himself as a
professor of learning,even THE professor of learning. Although he says
he doesn't like this he does do it. To a degree this reputation is
earned, I've certainly learnt a lot from his books and articles. But it
also means that we have to look carefully and critically at what he is
saying because if he is a leader he may in some respects be leading many
of us in a false direction. I think there are good and bad aspects of
Seymour's contribution and we ought to look at both.
> As far as I know, Papert is retired from MIT and no longer "sniffing
> around" for money from the "likes of Nintendo." Exactly who should fund
> basic educational research that bucks the entrenched instructionist
> school industry?
Who should fund basic educational research? Well, Brian Harvey and
George Mills
have developed their versions of Logo for free and the source code is
available.
Pity that Seymour doesn't use his influence to make MicroWorlds Open
Source as
well. (please have a look at my other recent post on Open Source,
especially the
Shirky and Raymond URLs). Most good educational research has been done
for love,
not money, eg. John Holt, Gatto, you know the list.
> It used to be all the rage to attack the defense contractors, probably
> with good cause, but come on... Nintendo? They actually like children (as
> opposed to textbook publishers and the two companies that now control ALL
> of educational software development and distribution). The MIT Media Lab
> does not need me to defend them, but their funding is non-proprietary.
> They promise the donors nothing for their contributions, just the ability
> to hang around and possibly learn something.
I think what you're saying is that companies like Nintendo are more
progressive, have more to offer, than those companies that control
school textbooks and educational software. This gels with what Seymour
is saying in his article (referenced for us by Ken). I quote from
Seymour's article:
"The crux of what I want to say is that game designers have a better
take on the nature of learning than curriculum designers. They have to.
Their livelihoods depends on millions of people being prepared to
undertake the serious amount of learning needed to master a complex
game. If their public failed to learn they would go out of business. In
the case of curriculum designers, the situation is reversed: their
business is boosted whenever students fail to learn and schools clamour
for a new curriculum! I believe that this explains why I have learned
very little about learning from reading textbooks on curriculum design
and have learned a great deal from both the users (mostly kids) and the
designers (often "grown-up kids") of computer games, of construction
kits (especially Lego) and of classical Disney theme parks and
animations."
Mixed up here with some good points (yes we can learn a lot from kids,
game designers, Lego etc.) is a casual arrogance ("business is boosted
whenever students fail to learn...") that I don't like. Moreover, I can
think of some good stuff that school curriculum designers have done that
wasn't based on Seymour's rather limited list of what constitutes the
good oil. It's also true that a lot of curriculum design is junk. But
more interesting is the fact that well designed curriculum also
sometimes fails to turn the kids on. There are deeper issues involved
relating to the whole structural and social setting of school that
Seymour doesn't address. Why not? Because that would put him in the
position of being critical of society as a whole, not just one segment
of it. Such a position is not good for winning grants.
Broadening this out a bit (as you know I've read a lot of Seymour's
writings) I think that behind it is a fierce but limited critique of
School on Seymour's part. Here is how Seymour concludes his article:
"...present day schools ... are relics from an earlier period of
knowledge industry." The implication here being is that if Schools put a
computer on every desk, ran Logo and Nintendo games then we'd be on the
way to a progressive education system. This analysis I think is rather
limited. Seymour's critique of school is based on media (computer as
metaphor for innovative media) and learning theory (School is
behaviourist not constructionist) which once again contains some good
points (which are often expressed poetically) but which overall leaves
out some important points. In particular, Seymour does not make a social
or structural critique of School, he does not make the point that School
is deliberately set up to be a well constructed shipwreck designed to
select the best swimmers. This is a central reason why School is so slow
to change. It is a social legitimation and accreditation machine. This
to me is a more central contradiction or exposure of the problem with
School and in this light I see Seymours analysis (which you are agreeing
with) of game designers as progressive versus school curriculum
designers as backward as dangerously simplistic. I'd see progressive and
backward elements in both groups. The main point I'm making is that it's
not really central to the real drama of School in society, but Seymour
is arguing as though it is the central point to make about School.
> I spend way too many hours trying to keep Logo visible and the publishers
> of it alive in an extremely hostile educational and corporate
> marketplace.
I have that feeling too, that overall we are rowing against the tide.
> Our naivete as a community has allowed inferior products like Hyperstudio
> to make of offering constructionism and the learner construction of
> knowledge in an open-ended environment while racking up sales of $100+
> million per year. Yeah, I know that Brian is going to say that Logo
> should be free, but our society does not value that which is free. While
> Roger Wagner went door to door evangelizing Hyperstudio, we sat here
> arguing about lexical vs. dymanic scope. The fact that we as a movement
> lacked the will, chutzpah or creativity to get our message out leads us
> perilously close to extinction.
Again you raise a few different issues here. First up, that's a cheap
shot about Brian and lexical vs. dynamic scope, because Brian has done
much, much more than that.
It's interesting how Roger Wagner has made Hyperstudio more successful
than other
versions of Logo. Is this because he is a better promoter or is it
because he has
developed it as a multimedia equivalent of a wordprocessor with the
programming in the background?
(that he has tapped into the existing biases of schools?). The blurb I
have here says, "With HyperStudio and your PC you can add any multimedia
element in under 60 seconds." I don't really know.
About Logo being free I'd refer you to the Open Source URLs again. Open
Source (Eric Raymond) is not the same as free software (Richard
Stallman) but that is another discussion.
> The business of school and many of the businesses dependent on schools
> are corrupt and school itself is pretty awful for the kids I know.
I agree with that (see more detailed response above).
-- Bill Kerr
>
> >Brian Harvey wrote:
> >
> >> "Gary S. Stager" <gst...@pepperdine.edu> writes:
> >> >I don't think you should read too much into Seymour's overglamorizing of
> >> >commercial forces.
> >>
> >> This would be okay if he only said it once, but it seems to be all he does
> >> say any more -- that the world will be saved by greedy rich bastards.
> >> I'm afraid we have to acknowledge that Seymour, despite being still a
> >> brilliant person, has sold out, in the strict technical sense of the term.
> >> He has changed his position for money.
> >>
> >> That doesn't mean every commercial venture is bad, and it *certainly*
> doesn't
> >> mean that everything in a school is good.
> >
> >-----------------------------
> >
> >I agree with Brian.
> >
> >I think that each commercial game and each new educational program
> >developed for
> >school ought to be evaluated on its merits. That's hard work. The difference
> >between Ken's workshop report article and Seymour's article was that the
> >participants in Ken's workshop were attempting a concrete analysis of the
> >good/bad aspects of games whereas Seymour was just making sweeping
> >generalisations (school curriculum is bad / educational software is bad;
> >commercial games are good). He uses language and metaphor well but is
> >intellectually lazy when it comes down to the hard work of concrete analysis.
> >Then he has a pious bit at the end about how his ideas will be met by
> >resistance
> >from vested interests (textbook and educational game designers) when it is
> >pretty
> >obvious that he is sniffing around for more research funding from the
> >likes of
> >Nintendo. I'd agree that some good things have come out of that (eg. LEGO
> >logo
> >etc.) but Seymour's assertion that School is corrupt and Commerce isn't, as a
> >generalisation, stinks.
> >-- Bill Kerr
Dale Reed
Mentioning Brian I wish all of you would re-read the first few pages
of Brian's book "Computer Science Logo Style."
It was from Brian who I originally learned that Logo was for people
who enjoy learning.
Under Words of Wisdom he says:
"There are no formal exercises at the ends of chapters. That's because
(1) I hate a school-like atmosphere: (20 you're supposed to be
interested enough already to explore on your own; and )3) I think it's
better to encourage your creativity by letting you invent your own
exercises."
Does not sound like any school that I ever attended. Certainly not
K-12 and during my seven years of engineering school we studied for
grades and degrees not for the pleasure of learning what we wanted to
know.
Brian's fine books and their words of wisdom were kinda expensive for
paperbacks. But at least Volume 1 is worth every penny I willingly
paid for it. Brian Harvey does not work for free and neither do you
Bill. And I bet George has a regular job also. And you all have
investments in the stock market expecting that the increase in
value(because of profits) will pay the grocery bills when you no long
want or cannot work. Just like all of us who believe it is NOT a good
idea to force the next generation to pay our bills for the last 30
years of our lives.
But providing free software might be good economics in certain
situations. Computers are actually "free" nowadays. And ink-jet
printers have always been mighty cheap because I assume the money is
made on the ink cartridges.
Most companies, and most individuals also, must produce more than they
consume(i.e. make a profit) most of the time or we will return(if you
believe we evolved from animals which I don't) to the jungle. Or
worse. Dale
---
Do something a robot cannot do.
$ dale...@worldnet.att.net Seattle, Washington U.S.A. $
Gary S. Stager
I have the highest level of respect possible for Brian Harvey as an
educator, humanitarian and computer scientist. I also think you do
terrific work. It's terrific that he and George Mills have been generous
and talented enough to create free Logo versions.
However, Brian would be the first to admit that his UCB Logo
implementations have completely different goals than a package like
MicroWorlds. UCB Logo is largely designed to support the study of
computer science.
I'm sure that a bit of research could determine where John Holt's funding
came from. John Taylor Gatto has written a couple of terrific books, but
currently keeps company with a peculiar political movement - and would be
the first to admit that he does not conduct basic research. Ted Sizer, a
leading secondary school reformer, receives much of his funding from
Walter Annenberg. Annenberg has donated close to a billion dollars to
school reform efforts (most of which he now admits was wasted on a system
incapable of renewal), yet he earned the lion's share of his fortune from
publishing TV Guide and the Racing Forum. Is his money tainted too? After
all, what could be worse than TV and horse racing?
For better or for worse, we live in a market economy that values
textbooks, Math Blaster, instructionism and not Logo. Yet Logo once had a
chance. Up through the eighties, educators in the USA felt a connection
to Logo. They heard or read Papert. They met folks like Brian Harvey at
conferences. The software was marketed and licensed by major hardware
vendors. Somewhere along the line we got lazy, arrogant or just
outsmarted by the educational publishing industry.
I used to discount the criticisms of the Logo movement that suggested
that we wanted to decide which teacher was capable of "getting it" before
welcoming them into the communtity, yet even if there is the faintest
hint of truth to these charges of elitism we have deprived too many kids
of a rich experience.
Roger Wagner made Hyperstudio such an unimaginable success by tirelessly
selling his dream. Although Hyperstudio is merely an environment for
multimedia collage building, he believes that it has the same
transformational power as Logo. He sells it that way, by the millions of
units. His success is the result of hard work, charisma and reaching out
to the customer.
What would happen in Australian schools if MicroWorlds cost more per copy
than Microsoft Office (since Microsoft practically gives it to schools in
a clear act of predatory pricing)? How many schools would pay more for
any educational software, no matter its educational value if it cost more
than Office?
The expectation that Logo should be free has allowed products like
Hyperstudio to sell for $100/box and increase both its R&D and marketing
budgets as Logo becomes increasingly invisible on the educational
landscape. Computer users expect new software versions on a regular basis
would like a new Logo for every new processor or OS. This requires
capital.
Don't get me wrong. I'm as excited by Logo's potential now as ever
before. I just don't know how much longer we can keep supporting
individual teachers in a battle of David vs. Goliath.
-=Gary