One Friday afternoon in April of 1996, I accepted the MOOSE Crossing application of a new member, a twelve-year-old girl who chose the character name Storm, and then I left town for the weekend. I usually log on periodically over weekends, but this particular weekend I went to Maine and was offline. When I returned on Sunday, I was surprised to learn that Storm now knew the basics of how to program. She had had limited previous experience—she had once tried Logo in school. Over the weekend, she made Jasper (a frog you can hug), Callie (a cat who purrs when you tickle her and responds wryly when you address her as "cat" rather than by name), and a catnip mouse for Callie. She also built and described three homes, and collaborated with Rachael (girl, age 13) on an extension to Rachael’s castle, complete with a dead princess on the floor who had died for love. Storm and Rachael spent most of the weekend together, talking and helping one another with their projects.

Rachael, who at this time had just turned 13 the previous week, is one of MOOSE Crossing’s most dedicated and accomplished regulars. She was the first home-schooled student to join. Being home-schooled gives her greater time to devote to MOOSE Crossing, and also greater need for social contact. An hour and a half after I accepted Storm’s application, Rachael checks the list of all members, notices that there is a new member who hadn’t logged on yet, and sends her this mail:

At a little before 5 PM, Storm connects for the first time. Her connection message tells her she had mail, so she checks "help mail" and figures out how to read her message from Rachael. She told me in a later interview that she learned how to use the online help system and a few other basic commands from the introductory message mailed to all new members with their passwords. She learned about the mail system because she wanted to read her mail from Rachael—interactions with other children were an integral part of her explorations with the system from the very first command typed.

A moment later, Rachael notices that Storm has connected, and pages her "May I join you?" ("Paging" is a way of communicating with someone who is not in the same room in the virtual world.) Rachael waits impatiently for Storm to respond, repeatedly checking 'who' (a command that tells you who is logged on, how long they’ve been connected, and how long they’ve been idle). She also repeatedly checks Storm’s last commands. It’s possible to see all the commands someone has typed recently. We added this feature to MOOSE Crossing to make it easier to help others figure out what they’re doing wrong when things aren’t working right. When you look at someone’s last commands, the system tells the person that you have looked. Thirty seconds later, Storm pages Rachael "Yes" and Rachael joins her, moving to be in the same room as Storm in the virtual world:

The expression "whoohoo!" has become popular over the last few years, and is taken from the television show The Simpsons. Homer Simpson says it when he's happy. Popular culture, particularly science fiction television, immediately gives these two girls something to talk about. Their mutual interest also identifies them to each other as being part of an unusual sub-group of teenagers: girls who like science fiction. While many cultural critics scorn popular culture as a negative influence on children (Postman 1985), in the right environment it can be a rich source of raw materials for personal expression (Jenkins 1992).

Rachael guesses that Storm doesn’t understand that the abbreviation "TNG" stands for "The Next Generation," and here finds a way to let her know without making a big deal out of it.

Storm hasn't yet had time to explore or get confused about anything yet—Rachael contacted her within moments of her arrival. Rachael's immediate offer of help is a bit premature. While Storm does not immediately avail herself of that help, she now knows that help is available when she needs it.

Rachael and Storm’s conversations about help with MOOSE Crossing and Star Trek become interwoven. This is typical of MUD exchanges. In face-to-face discourse, turn-taking conventions help to keep a conversation focused. In MUDs, while one person is responding to a previous point, another may introduce a new one. Typing in parallel often leads to many-threaded conversations (Cherny 1995).

Rachael explained earlier that Rally and Clover are her pets; however, from her use of "anyone," it's not clear if Storm yet understands that it's only really Rachael there. At this point, Storm looks at Rachael. She sees:

Rachael had written a special script (called a "look_self" script) which is run every time someone looks at her. She is now notified "Storm just looked at you." The program also causes her automatically to smile.

Rachael next looks at herself, to see what Storm has seen. Storm tries to look at Franky and Rachael's bean, not realizing she can't see objects that someone else is holding. Rachael audits Storm (a command which shows you all the objects a person owns), and sees that she still owns nothing.

Rachael here gets a bit fidgety, typing "who" a couple times and hugging her pig Rally. Storm is busy describing herself. Rachael guesses as much, and looks at Storm immediately after the description is finished. She sees "you see a tall, black haired, white - skinned girl, wearing all black. she is wearing lots of silver jewelry."

Storm gets immediate positive feedback. The feedback has value on several levels. First, it's a compliment to her technical ability—she was able to figure out how to describe herself. Second, it's a compliment to her writing ability. Third, being told you look nice is a generally a mark of social acceptance. Finally, given the predominance of issues of appearance in the culture of teenage girls, being told that your virtual self looks nice potentially has deep resonances.

The MOOSE Crossing documentation is written in this style, with angle brackets indicating that you should fill in the blanks. A classic slapstick routine has a bailiff trying to swear in a witness by saying "Repeat after me. I, state your name." The witness replies literally, "I, state your name." Giving someone directions including some things to duplicate literally and others to interpret is awkward, and is a common source of confusion for new users on MOOSE Crossing. Rachael here is anticipating the problem, giving Storm useful information not just about one command but about how to read the documentation in general.

Storm here attempted a bit of fantasy role playing. Rachael asked for a clarification—what is the reference frame of the conversation? They moved back to talking about real life.

When Rachael first offered help, Storm wasn’t yet ready to take advantage of it. Now that Storm has tried out a few basic commands and gotten to know Rachael a little bit, she’s comfortable asking for help. Rachael leads Storm up to the clouds, where Rachael demonstrates how you can jump and roll around on one of the clouds. While Rachael is jumping around, Storm sets her gender to royal, making use of Rachael’s earlier offered information.

Rachael is clearly delighted to meet Storm. She uses this command:

This causes her pig to hug Storm. Storm hugs the pig back. The pig allows Rachael to express affection indirectly.

Rachael next leads Storm to Home in the Clouds, a room that lets you build your own home by simply typing "build." Storm builds a home there.

Many kids on MOOSE Crossing make use of a special character class that lets them switch between multiple identities. One of Rachael’s alter-egos is called QueenAnne. Rachael morphs into QueenAnne and invites Storm to see her castle. Storm types "queenanne" to get to her room without being prompted, and Rachael follows. Storm bows to QueenAnne. QueenAnne changes back into Rachael, and leads Storm to Palladia, part of her mythical kingdom where you can build your own home. Rachael next explains how you can build a home in certain places (not realizing Storm has already done so at Home in the Clouds). Storm builds another home at Palladia. Rachael offers to show Storm her "normal" home, but Storm replies she'd like to do the tutorial. Rachael goes home. Storm types "tutorial" and then starts looking at the dog tutorials, a three-part sequence that teaches the basics of MOOSE programming by helping you to make your own pet dog. Rachael pages good bye:

Storm doesn’t reply. Rachael disconnects for about a minute, and then logs back on. Storm wanders into Rachael's room and looks at her pet penguin and cat. Rachael is there and says hi. Storm says hi back and goes out a different way than she came in. Rachael follows her. Catching up to her, she says "I can stay somewhat longer." Storm leaves again, and Rachael hesitates and then followed her again, this time to the recycling center. Rachael uses the 'announce' command to print to the room "THE BLUE BIN EATS THE TRASH" followed by "CRUNCH" several times. (Printing unattributed messages like this to everyone in the room is technically against the MOOSE Crossing code of conduct. Members generally remind one another of the code of conduct when it gets out of hand, but tolerate it in moderation if the content stays friendly.) Storm says "I'm getting out of here." She told me during a later interview that she didn’t realize Rachael had generated those messages. They walk to town together. At MOOSE Crossing, Storm says "hi! where to." Rachael replies "You choose, I'll follow." They arrive on Main Street:

Here Rachael checks the command "parents Rally" and gets this response output:

Storm does, and chooses the name Jasper. Rachael looks at Storm and sees she's now holding a creature. She tries to look at it, but Storm is holding it. She asks Storm to drop it. Storm describes it as "a frog" and drops it for Rachael to see.

Rachael responds immediately with positive reinforcement, and additional technical advice. Storm improves Jasper's description to "frog with orange skin, a black stripe and a sense of humor."

Rachael lists out a script of hers, and says it out loud:

Rachael waits a minute, repeatedly checking to see if the script is there yet.

Storm first opens an editor on Rally:hug, and then on Jasper:hug. One of the most common learning strategies for kids on MOOSE Crossing is using other kids’ programs as examples. In this respect, MOOSE Crossing shares a powerful learning feature with the World Wide Web. On the web, you can view the HTML code for any object. You don’t need to go to a special library of examples—everything is an example. In the course of your normal use of the web you encounter objects that you can later go back to and use as models. Similarly, every object on MOOSE Crossing is an example. While the MOO language allows some programs to be unreadable to others, I deliberately chose not to support this feature. All programs can be viewed by everyone and learned from. Children often start with very simple variations on others’ programs, and gradually progress to more original creations. This powerful learning strategy is often prohibited in schools, where it is declared to be "cheating."

It’s worth noting that on MOOSE (unlike the web), you are likely to know or have the opportunity to meet the creator of each item in the world of examples. Storm is not learning from a randomly selected example; she’s learning from an example created by her new friend, Rachael. The social and intellectual relationships are mutually supportive.

Rachael wanders around a bit and comes back to see how Storm is doing. Storm asks how she's supposed to save her work—whether she's supposed to click "Change" or "Revert". Rachael tells her to use 'Change'. (Based on feedback from users, we've since changed "Change" to "Save".)

Rachael here lists out Storm's script and sees this:

Storm examines Rally, checks 'parents Rally' and 'parents Jasper' and tries to chparent Jasper to #402, generic greeting creature, a program written by an eleven-year-old boy which serves as the parent object for Rachael’s pig. She told me during a later interview that she learned this from the tutorial she read earlier. She gets the syntax slightly wrong (forgetting the word "to") and the chparent doesn't work.

Storm reads 'help chparent'.

This is somewhat confusing advice. Rachael here checks Storm's last commands. The ability to check someone else’s last commands was designed for exactly what Rachael is doing: helping someone figure out what they're doing wrong.

Storm now moves the 'end' to a separate line of her program, and also

correctly chparents Jasper to generic_greeting_creature.

Rachael now goes home, and Storm tries to hug Jasper. She gets this error:

She gets rid of the stray quote before the "my" in line 2, and next gets an error message from the missing return in line 3. She changes it a few times, and finally gets it to compile, but now gets a run-time error. Next she simplifies the script, eliminating the last few lines:

This gives her a "missing end" error. She now changes it to:

This compiles, and she tries it out:

She edits the program to add in the missing space after the word "hug." Next she looks at herself, adds a few adjectives to her description, and changes her gender from royal to female. She looks at Jasper and hugs him one more time, goes home, and then disconnects for the day.

On Saturday, Rachael is on a few times during the day; no one else is around.

Storm logs on in the late afternoon, sees that no one else is on, and wanders around a bit. Next she creates a new creature and calls it Callie. She sets Callie's gender to female and Jasper's to male. She describes Callie as "You see a large, furry cat, with big orange eyes and a royal air around her." (She uses the client to edit Callie's description property this time, instead of using the "describe" command as she had previously.) She adds this script to Callie:

That works, so now she adds this one:

MOOSE’s pattern-matching parser makes it easy to have multiple scripts with the same name. These new scripts both work as well. When you type "utter cat," everyone in the room sees:

She looks back at Jasper's hug script again, and next changes Callie's utter scripts to be:

In her first version, she was able to put the now familiar "say" and "emote" commands—commands she uses all the time to communicate with Rachael—into her program. Her second version makes her program more like the other program she has seen before. However, she doesn’t understand what these commands really do. In this version, when you run the "utter Callie" script:

Next she changes the "utter cat" script:

Now the output is:

In her first version, the words "Callie says" were generated automatically by the say command. When she switched to "tell" instead of "say," those were missing. She now has manually added them back in. Storm tests this version and observes that she doesn’t see Callie look indignant any more, so she puts it back to an 'emote' and makes a similar change to the "utter Callie" script:

This doesn't do quite what she wanted:

Next she changes "tell context" in the second script to "tell Callie". When she tries it, that line simply doesn't appear to Storm. She puts it back to "context". In the emote, she changes the "She" to "Callie", so now she gets a line beginning with "Callie Callie". Next she changes the start of the line to "emote say." This prints out "Callie say Callie". Next she simply scrunches it into one long "tell context" command:

Now only the person typing the command sees Callie’s response. Storm may not understand that other people won’t see it. In fact, her original version was probably closer to what she wanted. She has spent 29 minutes experimenting.

Satisfied, she wanders around the world a bit. She chparents Callie to be

a greeting creature, as she had done with Jasper. She logs off for the day.

On Sunday, Storm connects again in the morning. Her character wakes up in her home, which she notices she hasn't yet described. She describes it as:

She modifies this a few times, settling on:

Next she reads the dog tutorial parts 1 and 2, and makes herself a child

of generic dog named Toby. She adds an "on tickle this" script to Toby which

just "emote laughs". She next changes it to this:

She looks at the pet script on Toby's parent generic dog, and then uses

that as a model to improve her tickle script:

The previous day, she struggled to use another object’s program as a model. This time, she is successful. This program will tell the context "You tickle Toby" and tell everyone else that "<context’s name> tickles Toby." The previous day’s experimentation has paid off. It’s worth noting also that her program is not an exact copy of what the tutorial or existing dogs do—she has customized it, making her dog react with a different personality.

She next tries a couple simple string constructions out at the command line, as suggested by one of the system tutorials (the second part of the dog tutorial):

She next reads help on the dig command, and digs a new room called Cat's

Corner, and describes it:

Unfortunately, she realizes that she accidentally put that description on her original room instead of the new one. With a bit of struggling, she manages to switch the descriptions. She told me during a later interview that she did this by reusing different describe commands from her input buffer to switch them.

Next she digs Jasper's Pond off of Callie's Corner. She is careful this time to make sure she is describing the right room. She describes it as:

Storm wanders around the world a bit and then makes a new object inheriting from generic ticklish object. She told me later that she believes she saw the object number on her visit to the library. She immediately recycles the new object without trying it out. She walks back to the library, looks at the parents of one of the library's objects, goes home, and makes herself another object: catnip mouse, with parent generic thing. She describes it as " A catnip mouse that seems loved well. Made of red felt and a yarn tail."

At this point, Rachael connects and pages her 'HI!!!' They have both been online several hours since they last met, but not at the same time. Rachael audits Storm and examines some of her creations remotely. Storm is in the process of adding a 'throw' script to her catnip mouse. She looks back at the hug script on Jasper as an example. She hasn't responded to Rachael yet, who pages a second time: 'May I join you, oh great power of wind?' Storm pages back 'yes'.

On Rachael's arrival, Storm immediately shows off her new creation, Jasper's hug script. Rachael acknowledges it by hugging it herself and then smiling. Throughout the conversation, Rachael offers positive feedback. The exchange is nicely two-way: Rachael has a question that Storm can help her with.

Storm next invites Rachael to her other room, where she shows off her cat Callie. Storm suggests that Rachael say "cat." Rachael does, and nothing happens. Storm tries to figure out what's wrong. Rachael looks at the code on the cat and figures out that she needs to type "utter cat", and does. She laughs. This prints output to only her. Storm urges Rachael to try it, not realizing she already has. Rachael explains she did try it—that's why she laughed. They continue to play with Storm's cat, and then Rachael pets her own cat Clover. Storm pets Clover as well and says she's pretty:

They continue talking, and showing off creations to one another. Rachael explains how her special player class gives you clothes, and suggests Storm use it. Storm explains that her creatures are named after friends of hers—her real life friend Jasper likes frogs. Rachael invites Storm to her game room, which boots you out (sending you back to your home) if you don't type the right thing. She doesn't explain how it works to Storm, but suggests she look at the code to figure it out. After getting booted, Storm just goes idle for a while and doesn't answer Rachael's pages. Rachael goes to work on Clover's enter script, and fixes it. Storm comes back and they talk about the game room a bit. Rachael tells Storm how to use the "list" command to look at code. (Storm looks for help on "list," which unfortunately doesn’t yet exist. We have added it since then.) Storm says she has to go, and they make plans to meet the next day around 3 PM. They both log off.

Rachael comes back a few hours later, and examines some of Storm's things. She makes a small change to one of her own programs, and logs off. Two hours later, she logs on briefly again. Finding no one on, she disconnects. She connects for half an hour again in the evening, and investigates what some basic system objects do.

Monday (a school holiday), Rachael logs on and off quickly in the morning. Storm connects a little after 1 PM. She starts to work on the dog tutorial, part 3. Rachael notices she's on and page 'Hi!' Storm pages back 'I'm working on a tutorial. When I'm done, I'll page you again. Thanks!' Rachael pages back 'Okay. See you then!!' Storm works through the tutorial, and then recycles the dog she's made. She goes back to working on the throw script on her catnip mouse. She experiments with variations on using say and emote and leaving them out entirely, with little luck.

Rachael works on improving some of her programs, and then snoops into various system functions. She checks Amy's last commands (which relate to the registration room) and then tries to figure out what the registration room does. Finally, she gets curious about what Storm is doing and checks Storm's last commands. Storm has been tossing her mouse over and over. Rachael asks if she can come over, and Storm says 'sure'.

Storm changes the script to this:

The old throw script is unchanged, which Rachael points out. Storm tells her

to try the toss script.

Rachael tries 'toss catnip' and 'catnip mouse is tossed across the room' is printed to both of them.

Storm tries to take Rachael's advice, but adds the new code to the first line instead of putting it on its own line. Now you can't toss it at all. In my face-to-face discussion with Storm and Rachael together, we were talking about the benefits of working with someone else, and Storm noted particularly appreciating Rachael’s support at this moment:

Storm drops her smart dog as Rachael requested, and it reacts to Rachael's cat as Rachael had hoped. Storm compliments Rachael on her cat. Storm suggests they go to the game room, and Rachael agrees. This time Rachael explains how it works right away. After jumping around in the game room for a while, Storm suggests they explore. They go to Paradise Island together, a room built by an eleven-year-old girl where you can swim, climb trees, and build a summer home. Storm builds another home there. Rachael teaches Storm about the 'audit' command. Rachael suggests Storm connect her houses in different places together to make a loop. Storm asks how. Rachael reads "help dig" and gives Storm a concrete example of a command. Storm works on making the circle of exits, with help (and positive reinforcement) from Rachael. Storm runs out of quota, and Rachael advises her to recycle stuff or ask Amy for more quota. (Each member of MOOSE Crossing is given a quota for the total number of objects he or she can build. This is necessary to prevent the database from getting too big for the machine. Children who ask for more quota are almost always granted more.)

Rachael has to leave. They plan to meet the next day at 10:30 AM. Rachael logs off and Storm logs off. Rachael logs on again a few minutes later. I am back from Maine, and talk to her a while later:

Rachael is logged on for several more hours that day. She programs Marj, a robot that acts as a second self for her online.

Storm logs on early in the morning. She continues to work on the dog tutorial, part 3. As part of her work on the tutorial, she has made a pet dog named Tao and another pet called Melvin the Moose. She changes the parent of her objects from generic dog to generic clichŽ-spouting object, a program I wrote that inserts clichŽs into the conversation at random intervals, and to which you can teach new clichŽs. She disconnects.

Rachael and Storm both connect promptly at 10:30, the time at which they had agreed to meet. Rachael sends her new puppet, Marj, to talk to Storm. Storm teaches Melvin a clichŽ. Rachael drops Clover. She's made some coding improvements on Clover since they last talked. Each of them is immediately showing off the new work they've done.

Storm must be a bit confused, because she pages Rachael asking if she would like to join her. Rachael has Marj explain that she is already there. As Rachael is talking, Melvin the Moose is generating errors.

The conversation continues, with Rachael not hearing Storm's side. Rachael wonders why Storm is being so quiet. Storm responds that she's not; Rachael of course doesn't hear that either. Storm asks a question, and gets no answer. She repeats it with increased urgency (i.e. six question marks). Finally, Rachael checks Storm's last commands and realizes something is wrong. In this instance, Storm has helped Rachael to detect a bug in Rachael’s program. The exchange of technical help has already become very much two way.

Storm suggests they make a medieval room. Rachael likes the idea. Storm asks where they should make it. Rachael suggests off of her castle. Rachael makes the room. Storm asks if she can be the one to describe it, and Rachael says yes. Joint ownership of objects is not currently supported. It would be a desirable feature. In this case, Storm ends up building an additional room so that she can be the one to describe it. Rachael sets up the exits to connect the new room to her castle. Storm writes a first description, and Rachael offers suggestions for additions. Storm starts with:

She expands it to:

This conversation ensues:

Rachael’s brainstorming inspires Storm to improve the description:

We discussed the construction of the room in our face-to-face interview:

This is a nice example of collaboration. The girls concur that the result is better than if either girl had made it on her own. They are learning from each other and inspiring each other to do better work. The result is a positive experience with creative writing: constructive feedback, a feeling of success, increased confidence, and increased interest in pursuing creative writing further.

Rachael and Storm decide the room needs a dead body and note. Is it a murder or a suicide? Who is dead and why? Their shared vision of what has happened here evolves as they work together. This time Rachael writes, and Storm offers detailed feedback. Rachael says she has to go. They agree to meet Thursday at 5.

Rachael comes back half an hour later. She asks Storm if she's going to go the Media Lab. Storm doesn't understand; Rachael explains that some times people go to the Media Lab to do MOOSE Crossing. Storm says no, she's not going. Storm shows Rachael her new Gargoyle. It has a couple of errors: it's an adaptation of the smart dog tutorial, but it's missing some required properties. Rachael explains that to Storm, and Storm fixes it.

Storm has made a ghost object. Its description reads:

Rachael suggests Storm might make the ghost say that whenever anyone enters the room. She explains how to write an 'enter' script.

The previous day, I met and talked with Storm online. She showed me her creations, and I complimented her on them and on her fast progress in general. Storm mentions this encounter to Rachael. Despite the child-centered nature of the environment, feedback from adults is still significant:

Rachael and Storm hang out together in the same room. Rachael works on getting Marj to be able to page people; Storm writes the enter script Rachael suggested. The girls’ online friendship continues to the time of this writing, much in the same fashion.

The girls finally met face to face for the first time on the day that they both came to the Media Lab to talk with me about this chapter. They hadn’t met previously because they live more than a 90-minute drive apart, and because the MOOSE Crossing code of conduct strongly discourages meeting other members face to face for safety reasons. Storm said Rachael was much like she had imagined. Rachael confessed that she hadn’t really given much thought to what Storm was like in real life. Storm arrived at the Media Lab first, and I interviewed her separately. I had interviewed Rachael on several previous occasions. Next Rachael arrived, and I interviewed the two of them together. I then gave them both an hour to talk without me present, and went to chat with their parents. The girls immediately decided to log on to MOOSE Crossing. Afterwards, I asked them to compare connecting together versus connecting alone from home:

Rachael and Storm hit it off face to face. After leaving the Media Lab late that Sunday afternoon, their families went out to dinner together. A few days later, I asked them each via MOOmail (email internal to MOOSE Crossing) how she thought meeting face to face would affect their online friendship. Rachael responded "I'm not sure. I think that it might strengthen our friendship...but I honestly don't know." Storm said "I don’t think it really changed our friendship much at all." They hope to meet up face to face again, but the driving distance between them may be an obstacle.

Rachael’s experience meeting Storm stands in contrast to her experience meeting Miranda. Rachael describes herself as "unpopular" and says "I'm a very intellectual person. I'm not very physical." I would characterize Storm as earthy. On meeting face to face, they appeared immediately comfortable with one another. On the other hand, I would characterize Miranda as a popular child. Miranda is smart, pretty, and adept and relaxed in her social relations. Rachael and Miranda had developed a warm friendship online. However, on meeting face to face, they seemed immediately uncomfortable with one another. Online, they hadn’t been aware that one of them was a popular sort of kid, and the other was unpopular. Rachael says that after meeting Miranda face to face, she was initially much less comfortable with her; however, over the months that followed, she slowly became more comfortable again. Different factors are significant in determining social success and social compatibility online versus face to face.

Storm’s experiences that weekend are quite typical of the general patterns of interaction on MOOSE Crossing. However, she was unusually lucky in one key respect: she immediately met someone with whom she has significant shared interests. The population of MOOSE Crossing is still smaller than is desirable (primarily because not enough kids have Macintosh computers on the Internet, and also as a result of the cumbersome nature of the registration process). This makes it more difficult for individuals to meet people they particularly like, because there are fewer people to chose from. Even within a larger community, it may take time before a new member happens to meet someone with shared interests. Storm was fortunate to meet Rachael right away.

Over that weekend, Storm used a variety of learning strategies and sources of support. In this transcript she makes use of:

Of particular interest is the inseparability of the social and intellectual activity going on. It matters not just that a learner have access to adequate support. One must also ask, support from whom or what? What is the relationship between the learner and the person or program offering assistance? That relationship is rarely if ever neutral. If a computer program attempts to affect a disembodied, non-anthropomorphized tone, working with that program will still evoke the learner’s basic feelings about computers and technology in general. For many people, those feelings are not positive. For this reason, the tutorials on MOOSE Crossing are written in a first-person, chatty style. The dog tutorial begins, "Hi there! This is Amy and I thought I'd show you how I made my dog, Pumpernickel." (Storm noticed the tone of the tutorials, and commented that it was just right—"It's not totally perky, but it's not like [speaking in a monotone] ‘this is how you do it.’") The informal, warm tone is intended to put kids at ease.

While some attention to the "personality" of a computer program can help make a more supportive learning environment, there is no substitute for human contact. A human can, for example, tailor assistance to the particular situation. Rachael was responding to Storm in a way computer programs can not, at least yet. Newman et al (Newman, Griffin et al. 1989).comment that "current computer systems are actually quite far from being able to perform the feats of sensitive interpretation performed routinely by human teachers"(Newman, Griffin et al. 1989). Research in artificial intelligence and education aims to help tailor support to the user, often by attempting to model what the user knows and anticipating typical mistakes. Unfortunately, such systems are still largely unsuccessful, and it’s unclear how much progress in this area is even possible. Unless the general project of creating an artificial intelligence is successful, interacting with intelligent tutoring systems will remain unsatisfying. A teacher’s relationship to a student is fundamentally social in nature, and computers can not yet fill that role. It’s not likely they will ever be able to do so.

Storm received help not from just anyone, but from a girl her own age who also loves Star Trek and Monty Python. Similarly, she used as examples not some official library of sample programs written by a disembodied authority figure, but programs designed and actively used by her new friend, Rachael. She also looked at additional projects that Rachael recommended, written by Rachael’s other online friends. Her choice of examples to embrace is a significant act that takes place in the context of a network of social relations. A child who mimics another’s way of dressing or speaking is paying that child a high compliment, and taking on that child as a role model. Similarly, using someone’s project as an example to learn from is to some extent accepting the project’s author as a role model. Making use of a sample program can be as much a social as an intellectual act.

Social context is of central importance to any learning experience. One of the strengths of networked learning environments is their ability to help integrate a supportive social context with the computational context. The Logo language traditionally arrives in a shrink-wrapped box, with little social support for its use. Teacher workshops try to build networks of support for the use of Logo as a learning tool; however, the workshops are usually too short, and too few teachers can attend. Once a workshop is over, typically so is the support. Additionally, the model most often used is one to many: a workshop leader supports a group of teachers; each teacher supports many kids. In a many-to-many model, kids support one another. MOOSE Crossing attempts to deliver a rich computational artifact to kids, with a network of many-to-many social support built in.