Uri Wilensky

Uri Wilensky is a learning scientist and the creator of NetLogo, the most widely used platform for agent-based modeling in education and research. He founded the Center for Connected Learning at Northwestern University, where he has spent decades investigating how computational tools can make complex systems thinking accessible to learners who would otherwise never encounter it. Wilensky's work extends the constructionist tradition of Seymour Papert into the domain of multi-agent systems, but with a crucial shift: where Papert emphasized the learner as the single agent exploring a microworld, Wilensky emphasizes the learner as the observer orchestrating populations of agents. Whether this shift preserves or dilutes constructionism is a question Wilensky's own writings do not adequately address.