If you asked me to tell you one person which influenced technology and computer education more than anyone else I would sure say : Seymour Papert. I have gone through his work for the first time when reading about Constructivism and I was astonished to find out that in the sixties he talked about children using computers as instruments for learning and for enhancing their creativity!
Of course people laughed at him. This is not strange since by that time computers were used by research centers or high tech companies only . He was the one to create the Logo programming language in 1967 as a tool for learning. Its features – modularity, extensibility, interactivity, and flexibility definetely serve the goal “Learning by Doing”.
Ghost in the Machine is an inspiring interview in 1999, which worth reading if you are interested in the way computers could change the way kids learn. I was glad to learn through twitter that Seymour Pepert was in MIT Media Lab on 5th March 2010 working together with the Scratch team .