[Edu-sig] Active Essays

[Dethe Elza]

There's a wonderful piece by Mitchel Resnick and Brian Silverman called
Exploring Emergence
(http://el.www.media.mit.edu/groups/el/projects/emergence/index.html). They
use java applets
on each page to illustrate and allow the reader to explore the concepts in
the text.  My wife (who
I use as my token non-techie to evaluate these things) not only "got it"
immediately, she got hooked
on playing with it, and started generating ideas for new/similar programming
gadgets.

When I struggled to read Bucky Fuller's Synergetics some years ago, I found
myself wishing for
something very much like this.  It's nice to see some progress being made to
incorporate
executable code in narrative streams to explain/explore complex subjects.

--Dethe