I was always interested in science as a child, especially electronics. I used to scavenge old television sets on the street, disassemble them and use the parts in my own projects -- radios, Geiger counters and other devices.

I was planning to become an engineer, but as I went through college I became interested in many different areas. I went into education because it gave me an opportunity to do something worthwhile while tapping into my varied interests.

For twelve years I worked with a group led by City College Professor Lillian Weber, a leading advocate of constructivist, active learning. I developed interdisciplinary classroom projects based on various themes including, ecology, aviation, music, and city planning.

The city-planning project included studies of structural engineering and architecture, which led me into a long collaboration with Mario Salvadori, a professor of civil engineering and architecture at Columbia University. Mario was one of the experts in the Scientists in Schools Program at the New York Academy of Sciences. This program brought scientists and engineers into schools to work with students and teachers. In 1980 I left the classroom to work full time at the Academy.

Another one of the scientists in that program was MIT Professor Seymour Papert, who had been working for a dozen years on Logo, a computer-programming environment designed for learning. I had worked with computers in the 1960s, when programming was done with punch cards or by rearranging wires on a circuit board. I liked tinkering with these machines, but I did not find an opportunity to incorporate them into a constructivist approach to learning and teaching. Seymour's view of the computer as a learning environment and tool that children could use for exploration and creation was very much in line with my thinking.

In 1981 I joined Logo Computer Systems, a newly formed company devoted to developing Logo software. I worked on software development, writing, project management, marketing and education. At this time I also continued working with Papert and the Logo Group at MIT, which was incorporated into the Media Lab when it was formed in 1985. I am currently a Collaborator with the Media Lab’s Future of Learning and Lifelong Kindergarten Groups.

In 1991 Papert and I formed the Logo Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides support for Logo-using educators around the world.

I have been with SEED since its beginning, creating and nurturing the development of the SEED Science Center and providing guidance for SEED’s educational programs. SEED has given me a new opportunity to bring together my interests in science, education, and computing. Like my work with Logo, it puts me in touch with a worldwide community of students and teachers. The SEED web site is like the Scientists in Schools Program, but in the age of the Internet we share in a global community of students, teachers and Schlumberger experts.

Aside from Logo and SEED, I enjoy hiking, swimming, cooking, traveling and spending time with my family. Our most recent project has been designing and building a house in rural northeast Pennsylvania.