{"id":3913,"date":"2016-12-22T12:24:51","date_gmt":"2016-12-22T17:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stager.tv\/?p=3913"},"modified":"2020-07-25T18:58:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T23:58:00","slug":"an-open-letter-to-the-iste-interim-ceo-and-board-re-seymour-papert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stager.tv\/?p=3913","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter to the ISTE Interim CEO and Board – re: Seymour Papert"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"iste-charter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dear Dr. Williams:<\/p>\n

Thank you so much for being the first ISTE executive or board member to address the sad state of affairs expressed by my old friend and mentor David Thornburg. It is disappointing that David\u2019s proposal was rejected. Dr. Thornburg is a pillar of educational computing.<\/p>\n

I am grateful to David for bringing attention to ISTE’s non-existent response to the life and death of Seymour Papert. It is worth noting that the father of our field, Dr. Papert, was never invited to keynote ISTE or NECC; not after the publication of his three seminal books<\/a>, not after the invention of robotics construction kits for children, not after 1:1 computing was borne in his image in Australia, not after Maine provided laptops statewide, not when One Laptop Per Child changed the world. This lack of grace implies a rejection of the ideas Papert advocated and the educators who had to fight even harder to bring them to life against the tacit hostility of our premiere membership organization.<\/p>\n

One would imagine that a conference dedicated to linoleum installation would eventually have the inventor of linoleum to address its annual gathering. Last year (2015), ISTE rejected my proposal to lead a session commemorating the 35th anniversary of Papert\u2019s book Mindstorms<\/a> <\/i> and the 45th anniversary of the paper he co-authored with Cynthia Solomon, \u201cTwenty Things To Do with a Computer<\/a>.\u201d See the blog post<\/a> I wrote at the time.<\/p>\n

Such indifference was maddening, but the failure of the ISTE leadership to recognize the death of Dr. Papert this past July, even with a tweet, is frankly disgraceful. After Papert\u2019s death, I was interviewed by NPR<\/a>, the New York Times<\/a> and countless other news outlets around the world. I was commissioned to write Papert\u2019s official obituary for the prestigious international science journal Nature<\/a>. <\/i>Remarkably, unless I missed it, ISTE has failed to honor Dr. Papert in any way, shape, or form. I have begged\u00a0your organization to do so in order to bring his powerful ideas to life for a new generation of educators. These actions should not be viewed as a grievance or form of attention seeking. ISTE\u2019s respect for history and desire to provide a forum for the free exchange of disparate ideas are critical to its relevance and survival.<\/p>\n

Dr. Papert himself might suggest that ISTE is idea averse<\/a>. In its quest to feature new wares and checklists, it neglects to remind our community that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Earlier this year, I was successful in convincing NCWIT<\/a> to honor Papert\u2019s colleague, Dr. Cynthia Solomon, with its Pioneer Award<\/a>. If only I could be so persuasive as to convince ISTE to honor the \u201cmother of educational computing\u201d before it\u2019s too late. As we assert in our book, Invent To Learn<\/a><\/em>, without Papert and Solomon there is no 1:1 computing, no Code.org<\/a>, no CS4All, no school robotics, no maker movement.<\/p>\n

In light of Papert\u2019s recent passing, and the remarkable 50th anniversary of the Logo programming language in 2017, I submitted two relevant proposals for inclusion on the 2017 ISTE Conference Program.<\/p>\n