Our Team

Dave has worked with Roger since the beginning of HyperStudio back in the 80s. He developed the hardware to digitize and edit sounds for the Apple IIGS.                                                          

Dave is a retired engineering manager from the medical device industry. He has been a mentor for a FIRST Robotics Team in Kettle Falls, Washington since 2013. He volunteers for the Stevens County Fire Protection District in Rice, Washington as an EMT, firefighter, and maintains the district communications equipment. He is an amateur radio operator — WD7K. He is a member of the Stevens County/Spokane Tribe Broadband Action Team to help bring internet access to rural northeastern Washington. 

Dave designed the hardware and circuit boards for the HyperDuino, MakerBit, and MakerPort.

John Maloney is best known as one of the co-creators of Scratch, which he worked on for its first eleven years. He also helped create Squeak Smalltalk, EToys, GP Blocks, and the Morphic UI framework. 

At MicroBlocks, John is the lead developer for both the virtual machine and the programming environment, as well as a member of the Project Leadership Committee. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from MIT and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington.

David Thornburg has worked in the field of educational technology since 1981, written numerous books, consulted for schools and government agencies, and invented a variety of educational technologies.

He has taught part-time at Stanford University, University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), College of Notre Dame (Belmont, CA), and Walden University. Thornburg has received many awards including Golden and Platinum Disk awards from CUE (Computer Using Educators, Inc.), was selected as a “pioneer” in educational technology by ISTE, and was named by Technology and Learning Magazine as one of the top ten most influential educational technologists of the past twenty years.

David received his PhD from the University of Illinois, and started his career at Xerox PARC.

Nancy Smith and her alter-ego Aunt Goodiebags inspire curiosity and encourage everyone to embrace new adventures. Dr Smith has impacted learners of all ages through teaching, workshops, keynotes, parent groups, professional development, and her tiny online museum. She has taught in elementary schools, at Syracuse University, LeMoyne College, Ramapo College, and has served as the Curator of Education at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY.

She has authored books on HyperStudio, HyperDuino, and children’s stories as well as a collection of “How-To” e-Books.

Holding a Ph.D. in Teaching and Curriculum from Syracuse University, Dr. Smith recently returned to her roots in New Jersey after living in Syracuse, NY.  Her work embodies the philosophy that “Learning Should Always Be An Adventure.”

With help from many books and a few friends, David Sparks taught himself to write code in nearly dozen different languages including BASIC, 6502 Assembly, Pascal, Perl, Python, PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript, C and C++.

A compulsive communicator, he sometimes writes as he learns. He contributed so many articles to Call -A.P.P.L.E. magazine that they listed him as a staff writer. He recruited other, more knowledgeable fellows from the Midwest to join in the fun. The group became briefly notorious as The Iowa Gang.

These days his writing appears on Github. He has written documentation for other github projects, including the DS3231 real time clock library. He has collaborated as a content reviewer and editor with authors of several books on coding.

Chris Torrence has contributed to the HyperDuino, MakerBit and MakerPort software development, including the Media Linker and the HyperFirmata firmware. 

Chris has a PhD in Physics from the University of Colorado, and is the Lead Engineer on a scientific visualization package used by NASA and major universities. He was also a part-time instructor at a charter middle school where he taught STEM classes in programming, engineering, and creative design.

Chris has an active YouTube channel that focuses on retro computers. He is a team member on 6502 Workshop, the creators of Nox Archaist, a brand new computer role-playing game for the Apple II. Chris is also the author of Apple2TS, a web-based Apple II emulator.

Doug Engelbart, Roger Wagner, Ted Nelson

Roger Wagner
Team Lead

Roger Wagner is best-known as the creator of the HyperStudio educational authoring software. He also led the development of the HyperDuino, the MakerBit, and the MakerPort.

He is a former physics, chemistry, biology and math teacher, patent-holding inventor, and was named by Technology & Learning Magazine as one of the “Most Important Educational Technology Gurus of the Past Two Decades”, along with Seymour Papert, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and David Thornburg. 

As an educator, software designer, and educational technology visionary with 40+ years of experience, Roger has worked with numerous K-12 schools, as well as university teacher prep programs, in their approaches for the creation of highly interactive student projects.

Roger recently served for six years on the Board of Directors of California CUE, (Computer-Using Educators), and is a business and science advisor to startups.

You can learn more about Roger’s work on his website.