The laptop brings back a more seamless kind of learning.

Giving the kids a programming environment of any sort, whether it's a tool like Squeak or Scratch or Logo to write programs in a childish way - and I mean that in the most generous sense of the word, that is, playing with and building things - is one of the best ways to learn.

We all learned how to walk and talk by interacting with our environment, with real goals and rewards.

We have to make machines understand what they're doing, or they won't be able to come back and say, 'Why did you do that?'

After graduate school, I joined Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island as an assistant professor, but I continued to program in addition to teaching and working on research. I built a program that crawled job boards to determine which skills employers value, which helped Johnson & Wales explore ways to improve its curriculum.

It's wonderful to see more of my colleagues recognizing the importance of investing in STEM education and scientific research and development.

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.

Just the example Delaware State University graduates set by the way they live their lives, should be an inspiration to other high school students to go to Delaware State.