3.

Papert asks the following question related to instruction:

● In trying to teach children what adults want them to know, does School utilize the way
human beings naturally learn in nonschool settings. How would you answer this
question?
■ In my opinion schools do not teach students the same way they learn
naturally Outside the four walls of the school, lessons in life are
experienced. They happen everyday and are not forced instruction based
on paper.
● Children learn through the process of “doing”.
○ There are times they succeed, experience growth, and move
ahead to new levels of challenges.
○ Times of failure. They attempt a task, it does not work out,
and they have to start over.
● Life lessons of perseverance, humility, victory, and starting over
take place through these lessons.
● Academically math is learned through ordinary tasks such as how to
pay for an item and count your change. Through cooking recipes
and figuring out how many people you will feed at dinner.
● Words and their meanings can be researched on the internet along
with any other topic you question.
● There are websites that will walk you through everything from
learning to play an instrument to rebuilding a motor for a car.
● Children are much more apt to learn if they are nteresting in what is
being taught.
■ With that being said, I don’t think we should trust the internet to be the
source of education for our children but I do believe there is work to be done
for the educational system to teach our children to be successful adults.

4. After Papert’s story about sleeping giraffes, he mentions the possibility of the creation of a
Knowledge Machine. The book was published in 1993. Do you think the Internet is the
Knowledge Machine Papert envisioned in the early 1990s? If so, does it work the way Papert
envisioned?
 ■ Through the descriptions Papert gives I do believe he was speaking of the
internet. He specifically speaks of something richer than his “printed books”.
He mentions no matter what Jennifer is interested in she will be able to “find
her way to the relevant sounds and images” and these would help her
understand and experience learning.
■ I agree it has changed “children’s relationships with knowledge.” Earlier in
the passage he mentions the machine will be more persuasive in helping
children learn than philosophies will. This is where we are today in
education. We are teaching philosophies that box in their learning while the
internet is a wide open space that encourages them to explore and choose
a learning topic that interests them.

5. After envisioning the introduction of a Knowledge Machine into the classroom, Papert asks
the following question:

● How would the introduction of Knowledge Machines into the School environment
compromise the with which we view reading and writing-that is, children’s fluency in
using alphabetic language? Assuming the Internet, as it exists today, is the Knowledge
Machine Papert envisioned, how would you respond to this question?
■ Reading and writing has always been considered the most important
avenue to knowledge. With the introduction and usage of the wide
knowledge base that exists within the world wide web there has been a
visible shift in the preferred methods of information gathering, not only
students but the human population as a whole. We do everything from
checking the weather to staying in contact with distance family.