Robotics and Seymour Papert

On Thursday Supriya had her second robotics class. She and her teammate actually programmed a Mindstorms NXT robot. They made the robot go around in a square and then an equilateral triangle. I am thrilled by this whole activity; Supriya is engaged but not thrilled. As the instructor points out, the goal of the class is actually to teach programming using robots. That brought to my mind Seymour Papert's "Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas" (I don't think it's a coincidence that Lego chose to call their kit Mindstorms). We sold this book when I worked at the Holt (& Growing Without Schooling) bookstore 12-13 years ago, and Manisha and I remember being impressed by Papert's ideas on using Logo (the visual programming language he invented at MIT's Media Lab) and turtle geometry. Well, it's a decade later and our child is actually learning math and programming using those concepts. That's so cool. I have brought out my copy of Mindstorms and we plan to reread it.