She is a recognized computer science educator with a broad range of publications who has taught students including disabled children, urban teachers, and elite undergraduates for more than 30 years. She is a co-founder of the Interactive Multimedia Program at the College of New Jersey. She has a background in computational linguistics, with a Ph.D. in computer science from Columbia University, a master’s degree in computing in education from Columbia Teachers College, and a bachelor’s degree from MIT, where she was part of Seymour Papert’s Logo group at the very beginning of research on constructivist computing environments.