Sphero BB8 Programmable Toy

I like Sphero and am impressed by their ability to execute as a company. Their customer service is terrific and their ability to attract the Star Wars license, publicity, and this recent New Yorker profile are unprecedented.

Sphero makes terrific toys. However, companies and reporters would be well-served by speaking with educators who understand learning and have paid some dues before making grand pronouncements about education. Simply comprehending the differences between teaching and learning would be a welcome first step.

The article’s ad-hominem attacks on Logo in favor of C for god’s sake shows just how profoundly misguided the “Coding” newbies happen to be. History does not begin with them. Every thought they have, no matter how unimaginative or unoriginal is not automatically superior to the work done by those of us who have taught kids and teachers to program for decades. David Ahl told me that Creative Computing Magazine had 400,000 subscribers in 1984. Thirty years ago, my friend and Constructing Modern Knowledge faculty member, Dr. Dan Watt, sold more than 100,000 books of Learning with Logo. Tens of thousands of educators taught children to program in the 1980s and then again after laptops were introduced in the 1990s. This was not for an hour, but over sufficient time to develop fluency.

It takes real balls for every other startup company, politician, and Silicon Valley dilettante to advocate for “coding” with a macho certainty suggesting that learning to program is a novel idea or accomplished in an hour.

Sphero is hardly the first programmable robot. My friend Steve Ocko developed Big Trak for Milton Bradley in the late 1970s. Papert, Resnick, Ocko, Silverman, et al developed LEGO TC Logo, the first programmable LEGO building system in 1987. (Watch Seymour Papert explain the educational benefits in 1987) This history is chronicled in our book, Invent To Learn - Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom.

Seymour Papert’s seminal book, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Apologies to The New Yorker, but balls don’t teach kids to code. Kids learn to code by teaching balls. Find yourself a copy of Mindstorms, 35 years-old this year, and you’ll understand.

Sphero

Sphero is a fun toy that may be programmed IN Logo — the best of both worlds. Tickle for iOS is a version of Scratch (and Scratch is Logo) whose secret sauce is its ability to program lots of toys, several made by Sphero.

Logo turns 50 years-old next year. Let’s see what Silicon Valley creates that children learn with for more than 50 days.

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Professional learning opportunities for educators:

Constructing Modern Knowledge offers world-class hands-on workshops across the globe, at schools, conferences, and museums. During these workshops, teachers learn to learn and teach via making, tinkering, and engineering. Computer programming (coding) and learning-by-making with a variety of materials, including Sphero and Tickle. For more information, click here.