Hello Reader,

We both began programming computers around fifty years ago. What has recently become possible blows our minds.

We are sharing two new pieces from Gary — an essay and a working paper — to inspire deeper computational making by learners of all ages, and by the educators who teach them.

GARY'S NEW ESSAY

AI Fuels My Imagination

Forty years ago, Brian Silverman wrote a small Apple II program called The Phantom Fishtank that let learners explore cellular automata through play. Gary loved it then. Scientists still refer to it. But alas, the software had been lost to the platform shifts that render a lot of fine software extinct.

Last week, while packing for a trip and only half paying attention, Gary uploaded a PDF of Brian's book to Claude Code and asked whether it could create a web version of the program. The result was remarkable! A few minutes later, Gary had working software, with a manual for today’s users, and Brian is properly credited as the original developer.

Try it: The Phantom Fishtank​

While much of the conversation about AI in schools has been about catching cheaters, Gary has spent a few years using these tools as a collaborator, researcher, editor, illustrator, mentor, apprentice, and employee — with results that would have been impossible months ago. Gary's essay tells us the full Fishtank story and the larger argument behind it: there is no guarantee that great software will live forever. In fact, the best open-ended children's software disappeared decades ago, taking HyperCard, Logo, and most of the software that made computing meaningful for kids along with it. For the first time ever, teachers have a practical way of bringing that kind of software back to life — not by buying it, but by making it and making it their own. If teachers or students have a great new idea, working software is at their fingertips.

Kids can now level WAY up. If you make simple things easy to do, you make complexity possible. A six-year-old should be able to build a cereal-box dinosaur that sings, dances, tells jokes, predicts the weather, and sends a text message to Grandma. The tools to do that should now be in every backpack.

→ Read "AI Fuels My Imagination"​

GARY'S NEW WORKING PAPER

A Macro Look at Microworlds

Teachers Designing Small Worlds Where Big Ideas Live

The Fishtank story works because it stands on a tradition. Fifty years ago at MIT's AI Laboratory, Seymour Papert and his collaborators introduced a quietly radical idea: that the most powerful kind of educational software is not the kind that teaches, but the kind a teacher designs for the particular children in front of her. They called it a microworld. Gary is reminded of microworlds anytime he wants four-year-olds and adults to engage in similar learning adventures. Such reflection led Gary to write and share a new working paper.

Gary's working paper revisits and extends the microworld tradition with the following big ideas:

• Microworlds put educators, not software developers, in the driver's seat.
• Read through the lens of Reggio Emilia, the microworld is a computational atelier — the prepared environment as a “third teacher.”
• The microworld idea makes Bruner's claim operational: any subject can be taught in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.
• Two appendices extend the case: one on Parsons Problems (a parallel tradition from computer science education research) and one collecting practical step-by-step tutorials for Snap!, Finch robots, and Turtle Art.

→ Read "A Macro Look at Microworlds"

Read together, the two pieces outline a path forward for educators who want their use of technology to mean something. Gary's working paper makes the case that teachers should be designing the computational environments their students inhabit. Gary's essay shows that the tools to do that are now within practical reach of any educator willing to “mess about.”

If either piece resonates, please forward to a colleague.

Sylvia Martinez & Gary Stager

Constructing Modern Knowledge

P.S. While you're thinking about microworlds and the Logo tradition they grew out of: we recently added three classic Australian Logo books to The Daily Papert archive — seminal essays by pioneering Aussie academics written between 1975 and 1997. The full collection of Logo books and the history of 1:1 personal computing in schools lives at dailypapert.com/logo. New subscribers who want the broader context will find a plain-language introduction to Logo and constructionism there as well. Learn more here.

P.P.S Gary is available for school workshops, in service days, and residencies. Change the way your school views technology with inspiration from Gary! Find out more.