First of all, let me say that I love reading articles by my professors, it adds humor, especially when it's Spike.

Other than that, I asked Dan Gould to show me the actual applet that was discussed in this paper. It was pretty impressive and I have no doubt in my mind that it was a good teaching tool. I could elaborate more on it if I were actually trying to understand the concepts it was trying to explain. But, alas, I am not...

Still, I could tell that it was a great tool. But the article was rather confusing. It talked about Java, it talked about the web, it talked about visualization tools, and it talked about colors and how when they are blended they don't work precisely ont he RGB scale as expected...It even discussed the history of visualization tools at Brown. But because this paper covered so many different topics I was overwhelmed and confused as to what the point was.

It discussed BALSA which we were shown in fifteen. I actually thought it was a great tool...I learned a lot that day. But it is much better, and the authors agree, to interact with the actual demonstrations of the algorithms. BALSA was more a tool to SEE the algorithms rather than interact with them. But it still was more useful than nothing.

I'm still quite confused about this article so I don't think that I can gather my thoughts comprehensively.

In my reaction, I added links to all of the inhouse information on interactive illustrations. You could see some of the demos that are not 18 feet above your head. They are rather impressive and the project has improved greatly!