Like many of my colleagues in this new and emerging field, I read the groundbreaking book Mindstorms, and decided to go study with Papert at the AI Lab at MIT. Papert was by far the most interesting thinker in this interdisciplinary field back then, and I believe that he still is the leader of them all. I was then accepted to join the new experimental MIT Media Lab when it was founded in 1985, as a pioneer PhD student in Papert’s new program. (It is our 20th Anniversary Reunion celebration this month! Oh, time flies too fast). It was an amazing and unusual team of researchers. But that is a whole other interview! We did research grounded in epistemological, educational, social, clinical, and cognitive theories; focusing on leading international psychologists and educators and philosophers like Piaget (Swiss), Dewey (American), Montessori (Italian), Bruner (American), Vygotsky (Russian), Paulo Freire (Brazilian) and Papert (South African). No matter where they came from -- geographically and theoretically -- they all held that children learn better by hands-on activities, by making things, by doing things, within a culture that allows them to drive their learning experiences. When we construct an object in our mind, or develop an idea into a story, a simulation, a movie, or a physical object, it becomes our own personal knowledge. This is the way scientists, mathematicians, and artists work. Great teachers and leading educators learn this way too.

	With the computer and the Internet, it's now possible to let kids free in a big virtual world where they can choreograph their ideas, animate and create things, and do things that are really rich in concepts.

simSchool: Can you say more about how computer games relate to your work with Papert?

IHC: Another reason why I got excited about this new emerging area, is that in computer games kids learn by taking charge of the process and by contracting their own learning. More than just fun, certain games can illustrate a powerful idea and connect with formal and informal knowledge. Games can be more intuitive and more sensory. I remember Papert working with children and Lego gears. He would tell them "pretend you are a gear in the car system..." He also asked kids to think like they are the robot or even the circle or the square when they worked with the original Logo Robot Turtle. As they moved around, kids got into the kinesthetic motion of the Lego gears or the Logo Turtle. They made the angles with their bodies. They became the gear and felt the force or friction against another gear.

I did a lot of thinking and research work with Papert in this area, looking at the psychology, the mathematics, the imagination and originality of these kids’ ideas as a result. When you project yourself into the object or place, the abstract becomes concrete. Children can project themselves into being a fraction and comparing one to another or becoming a gear to understand how things move. Games have the same power to carry powerful physics and math into kids’ minds. If you manipulate or construct the object, even when you play with something, you can learn about it in a deeper way.

	Not all simulations and games are good. But let's turn this question on its head and look at games and simulations as learning environments.

simSchool: Can you talk about how this kinesthetic experience of kids imagining themselves inside an object relates to your interest in games and simulations?

IHC: I have one other personal memory to answer your big first question. When children imagine being inside the object, their experience is kinesthetic. I used to be a dancer and gymnast - the movements, using my body parts and my muscles activated my kinesthetic intelligence. I would “be” in the experience and get to “know” the physics of gravity, inertia, or the mechanics of a challenging stunt or of complex dance steps. From personal experience I know that an activity that is kinesthetic engages both sides of the brain. So, the first time I programmed in Logo in 1983, it felt to my body and to my brain like choreographing a dance, or inventing a new series of movements in gymnastics. In other words, it was connecting with quite a familiar kinesthetic feeling, and it was easy to fall in love with that!

Basically, I am interested in child development, how the mind works, and how we can personally make things out of nothing, especially new media. Working at the Media Lab at MIT in the 80’s and early 90’s, took me away from Print and TV media to computational environments and more playful interactive media. I fell in love with computers. With the computer and the Internet, it’s now possible to let kids free in a big virtual world where they can choreograph their ideas, animate and create things, and do things that are really rich in concepts. This kind of thinking made sense and fueled much of my later work -- constructing with digital objects, playing with digital media on the computer in order to develop creativity and imagination as well as entrepreneurial skills. ...continue