The Digitized Legacy of Alfred Bork

This page documents the legacy of a Alfred Bork, a pioneer in educational technology. All resources shared here were scanned/digitized from the Alfred M. Bork Papers. MS-F035. Special Collections and Archives. The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.

Below, you can try nine educational computer programs developed for the Scientific Reasoning Series, which was originally developed in 1986 by the Educational Technology Center under the direction of Alfred Bork at the University of California, Irvine. The programs were manufactured by IBM for IBM Personal Computers running the Disk Operating System (DOS) 3.0 or higher. The copyright is held by The Regents of the University of California. Use of this material is for educational and research purposes only.

I found these programs in floppy disks that were part of Alfred M. Bork Papers given to the UCI Libraries after Bork passed away. With the help of the UCI Libraries Special Collections & Archives, the programs have been digitized and are being shared here for research and educational purposes. All other resources shared on this page are also part of the Alfred M. Bork Papers.

According to the manual that comes with the programs distributed by IBM:

The Scientific Reasoning Series is designed to help middle school and high school students think and reason using scientific methods. This series is also useful in scientific literacy courses in colleges and universities. While offering friendly support, the program places students in situations similar to those experienced by scientists.

Many of the programs are based on the discovery approach to learning, and are presented through dialog activities, as if the student is conversing with teachers skilled in guided learning through discovery. Each program covers a different topic and does not depend on the rest of the series.

The programs are as follows:

• • Distance

  • Area

  • Reflections

  • Patterns

  • Families

  • Batteries and Bulbs

  • Heat and Temperature

  • Crystals

  • Speed

To run a program, type the following commands:

cd directory_name

Startup

The directory name is simply the name of the program, with the following exceptions:

• For Batteries and Bulbs, the directory is "Bulbs"

• For Heat and Temperature, the directory is "Heat"

• For Reflections, the directory is "Reflect"

So for example, if you want to open the Batteries and Bulbs program, type:

cd Bulbs

Startup

Once you are in a program, press Esc to either quit the program or change the writing speed.

To switch to a different program, you can either simply refresh the browser or quit the program then type the following commands:

cd ..

cd [directory name]

Startup

Important Notes: Some of the programs use very bright colors, vibrant contrasts, and flashing images which may bother certain people. You can adjust your screen's brightness to make the colors less bothersome. The Area and Speed programs use relatively milder colors and should be more suitable for particularly sensitive viewers. If you are sensitive to slow flashing images, you may not want to use even these programs. Also, high pitched sound effects are often used. You can either mute the sound or lower the volume.

Enjoy!