Seymour Papert
Built constructionism and the Logo turtle — children learning powerful ideas by making things they care about.
Seymour Papert was a mathematician who worked with Jean Piaget in Geneva before coming to MIT, where he co-founded the AI Lab and, later, the Media Lab. He built the philosophy of constructionism: we learn most deeply when we are actively building something we care about and can share. To give children something powerful to build with, he co-created the Logo language and its turtle.
His 1980 book Mindstorms — this site's namesake — argued that children could use computers to encounter powerful ideas and, inside a microworld, become the active authors of their own learning. See what is constructionism and the topic Papert & constructionism.