Teaching and learning with technology

The foundations of using technology to increase students’ engagement and learning are most often associated with the work of Seymour Papert, a mathematician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who co-founded the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory with Marvin Minsky. In the mid-1960s, Papert moved to MIT from Geneva, Switzerland, where he had been working with Jean Piaget. Piaget’s work as a psychologist who studied the learning patterns of children provided Papert with a constructivist framework to develop the LOGO programming language. This language includes several critical features of constructivism including flexible types of data, interactivity, modularity, and the ability to extend the learning experience beyond the task at hand (Logo Foundation, 2012).