Michael Tempel
	A.B. Sociology, Columbia College, 1967 M.S. Education, City College of New York, 1974 M.A. Educational Technology, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1981

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 had planned to become an engineer, but as I went through college I became interested in many different areas. I went into elementary education because it gave me an opportunity to do something worthwhile while allowing me to remain a generalist. As an elementary school teacher, anything I was interested in could become the basis of a curriculum.

For twelve years I worked with a group led by City College Professor Lillian Weber, an 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 part of Scientists in Schools, a program I was working with at the New York Academy of Sciences. Another scientist in that program was Seymour Papert.

I met Seymour one evening in 1979 when he demonstrated Logo and spoke at a meeting of teachers and computer scientists. He talked about computers and learning, about artificial intelligence and his years with Jean Piaget. 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 contructivist approach to learning and teaching. Seymour put it all together for me and we began a 20 year friendship and collaboration.

Within a few months I taught my first Logo workshop for 15 teachers in the New York City Public Schools and at the Bank Street School. I spent the next year providing support for those teachers as they pioneered the use of Logo and computers with their students.

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. With the creation of the Logo Foundation in 1991 I have broadened my involvement with the worldwide Logo community. The rise of the Internet facilitated communication among us, but it is still no substitute for the work I get to do directly with people in Logo projects around the world.

In addition to the Logo Foundation I work at the SEED Foundation, a nonprofit initiative of Schlumberger Limited. My primary role is to develop a science education web site — www.slb.com/seed — that brings scientists and engineers together with learners and teachers around the world. I think of it as Scientists in School On Line.

Aside from Logo and SEED, I enjoy running, hiking, swimming, cooking, traveling and spending time with my family, especially attending my son's ice hockey games.