EduCon 2023

Educators benefit when they understand that they stand on the shoulders of giants. Without the vision of Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon educational computing and the maker movement might not exist. They created a progressive vision for the field and many of the tools and many of the pedagogical metaphors that continue to guide effective practice.

In 1971, they not only predicted 1:1 computing for every child, physical computing, computer science for all, and the maker movement, but they demonstrated what it looked like in practice. Despite that, their provocations remain unrealized in far too many schools a half century later.

The presenter's recent book project assembled nearly four dozen of the world's leading technologists, educators, scholars, educators, and visionaries to explore the wisdom of Twenty Things to Do with a Computer, reflect on our progress, and set a course for the next 50 years.

Schools seeking a tech plan, would be well served by recognizing that we stand on the shoulders of giants and that the goals of a 1971 document remain sadly elusive for too many of our students. This workshop hopes to help remediate that situation.

The scenarios presented not only inform technology planning, but prepare educators to be sufficiently future-ready to sustain pedagogical progress and maintain the viability of schooling.

At EDUCON, the presenter and author of the new book, "Twenty Things to Do with a Computer - Forward 50: Future Visions of Education Inspired by Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon’s Seminal Work," recounts the vision of Papert and Solomon, share the reflections of the book's extraordinary contributors, and propose epistemic lenses for guiding educational progress over the next fifty years.