Infancia y Aprendizaje Journal for the Study of Education and Development ISSN: 0210-3702 (Print) 1578-4126 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/riya20 Thinking with your fingers and touching with your mind: the cognitive dance of Edith Ackermann / Pensando con los dedos y tocando con la mente: la danza cognitiva de Edith Ackermann Paulo Blikstein To cite this article: Paulo Blikstein (2018) Thinking with your fingers and touching with your mind: the cognitive dance of Edith Ackermann / Pensando con los dedos y tocando con la mente: la danza cognitiva de Edith Ackermann, Infancia y Aprendizaje, 41:2, 248-286, DOI: 10.1080/02103702.2018.1450475 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02103702.2018.1450475 Published online: 08 May 2018. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 616 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=riya20 Infancia y Aprendizaje / Journal for the Study of Education and Development, 2018 Vol. 41, No. 2, 248–286, https://doi.org/10.1080/02103702.2018.1450475 Thinking with your fingers and touching with your mind: the cognitive dance of Edith Ackermann / Pensando con los dedos y tocando con la mente: la danza cognitiva de Edith Ackermann Paulo Blikstein Stanford University (Received 9 December 2017; accepted 29 January 2018) Abstract: Edith Ackermann was one of the most important scholars in the interdisciplinary field of Child-Computer Interaction. Trained as a devel- opmental psychologist and having worked with Jean Piaget in Switzerland, Ackermann went to MIT in 1985 to join an intrepid group of researchers led by Seymour Papert who were trying to understand how extant theories of development and learning would fare in a world in which children would be surrounded by computational artefacts. For the ensuing three decades, Ackermann would use her unique interdisciplinary expertise in the service of creating new theories of development for this new world, generating cutting-edge research, inspiring a generation of students, and producing seminal papers. This article, making use of literature as well as interviews with colleagues of Edith, discusses Ackermann’s contribution to the field, her life trajectory, impact, and ideas. Edith passed away on 24 December 2016. Keywords: Edith Ackermann; child-computer interaction; constructivism; constructionism; Seymour Papert Resumen: Edith Ackermann fue una de las investigadoras más destacadas en el área multidisciplinaria de la interacción Niño(a)-Computadora. En 1985, tras formarse como psicóloga del desarrollo y trabajar con Jean Piaget en Suiza, Edith Ackermann se trasladó al MIT para formar parte de un intrépido grupo de investigadores dirigidos por Seymour Papert, cuyo objetivo era tratar de predecir el papel que las teorías del desarrollo y el aprendizaje existentes en aquel momento desempeñarían en un mundo en el que los niños(as) vivirían rodeados de dispositivos digitales. Durante las tres décadas siguientes, Ackermann puso sus singulares conocimientos interdisciplinares al servicio de la creación de nuevas teorías del desarrollo adecuadas a este nuevo mundo, dando lugar a estudios pioneros que inspiraron a toda una generación de estudiantes y que generaron artículos transcendentales en la disciplina. En este artículo, basado en la literatura relevante y en entrevistas English version: pp. 248–266 / Versión en español: pp. 267–285 References / Referencias: pp. 285–286 Translated from English / Traducción del inglés: Mercè Rius Author’s Address / Correspondencia con el autor: Transformative Learning Technologies Lab, Stanford Graduate School of Education, 520 Galvez Mall, room 232, CERAS Building, Stanford, 94305 CA, USA. E-mail: [email protected] © 2018 Fundacion Infancia y Aprendizaje The cognitive dance of Edith Ackermann / La danza cognitiva de Edith Ackermann 249 con colegas de Edith Ackermann, se discuten las contribuciones de la inves- tigadora en este campo, así como la trayectoria de su vida, su impacto y sus ideas. Edith Ackermann falleció el 24 de diciembre de 2016. Palabras clave: Edith Ackermann; interacción niño-ordenador; constructi- vismo; construccionismo; Seymour Papert Edith Ackermann was an unconventional scholar in the best sense of the word: not only did she influence the field with wildly creative, deep, and original ideas, but her life trajectory was itself unusual. Even without a clear academic home, she influenced hundreds of students and scholars. Without grants and a large research team, she left deep marks on the thinking of a whole generation of researchers. Her voice is heard across communities and countries — in the United States (US), Europe, Latin America, in the Interaction Design for Children community, in Piagetian research circles, amongst constructionists, in informal learning spaces such as the San Francisco Exploratorium, and at the LEGO company. In a time when researchers were incentivized to specialize and constrain themselves to micro-fields of scholarship, and often prioritize quantity over depth, Edith did exactly the opposite: she was broad, but deep; her knowledge extended into numerous fields of knowledge, but still she managed to be incredibly thoughtful in all of them. She did not belong to any institution and did not respond to any of the academic powers: she was a true scholar of the world. This article is the result of several interviews with her friends and colleagues, shortly after her passing in December 2016. It also includes a review of some of her seminal papers, as well as my recollection of my conversations with her over the years. As a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab in the early 2000s, I had the privilege of having Edith as an informal thesis advisor, and of working with her on several projects in the US, Brazil, and Mexico. We stayed in touch in the years that followed, and she was a frequent speaker in my classes, events, and conferences at Stanford University. In October 2016, she gave a keynote address at the FabLearn conference on the Stanford campus, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award. It would be her last public appearance. An aesthetic sense beyond her years Although Edith’s father was an established Swiss surgeon, she grew up in neither affluence nor poverty. Around 1960, when Edith was a young teen, her mother and stepfather relocated the family from Switzerland to the south of France. They built a house in Valbonne, a village some distance from the coast, outside of Cannes. Edith and her sister, Eveline, were enrolled in the Lycée Capron, a private all-girls school in Cannes. The sisters would eventually board at the school. Compared with most of the other families associated with the school, Edith’s family might be described as Bohemian. They were worldly. Her mother, a journalist, and her stepfather, also a writer, had interests that extended far beyond those of the bourgeois parents at the school. Although Edith would leave Cannes 250 P. Blikstein after high school, something about the city would never leave her. She would return frequently for the rest of her life. By the time she entered adolescence, it was clear to those around her that she had a natural gift for seeing form and colour. Her overall aesthetic sense was advanced beyond her years, and her middle-school art teacher even urged her to pursue a career in the visual arts. Although Edith would never become a profes- sional artist, her uncommon and precise aesthetic sense would greatly influence her career. After Cannes, her next stop was a two-year layover in Innsbruck, Austria, where she studied languages with the intent of becoming an interpreter (through her adult life, Edith would become fluent in at least six languages). She was unhappy in Innsbruck, and Geneva looked like an appealing alternative. The city was cosmopolitan. It was the European seat of the United Nations, and the University of Geneva had an active role in training interpreters. Once she made the decision to major in psychology, the course was set. From a bachelor’s degree in experimental psychology in 1969, to two Master’s degrees in developmental psychology and clinical psychology in 1970 and, ultimately, a doctorate in developmental psychology, her intellectual path would be steered by the hand of a giant — Jean Piaget. Radical days In order to bring his theories of cognitive development to full fruition, Piaget relied on an army of assistants to interview, observe, and record the behaviour of his young subjects. Edith began as a foot soldier in that army, but the Piagetian observation techniques Edith acquired early on in this labour-intensive practice would go on to serve her well for the rest of her professional life in a variety of settings. Her lifelong friend Nicole Cox was another such conscript in the Institut des Sciences de l’Education (ISE) at Lake Geneva. We were at first assistants to the assistants. Students used as scribes, in this incredibly low-tech enterprise, transcribing verbatim what children said. Two stu- dents for each interview, comparing notes for accuracy, then going home to type it all on manual typewriters, bringing the raw data back to the Institute the next day. Piaget had permission to go into any public school in Geneva, picking any child to interview, five days a week. Since we were not interested in any demographic information (except age) or personal story, the city government had granted this access to further the research into cognitive development and the acquisition of knowledge. And that’s how Edith and I became fascinated by listening to a mind at work. Then we became real assistants ourselves, Piaget’s ‘collaborateurs’. (Cox, 2017) In the street, outside the labs and lecture halls, an entirely different kind of revolutionary movement was taking place. By 1968, the University of Geneva was metaphorically ablaze with political unrest.