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From death notice in NYT, 2000:
"OCKO-Stephen Jay of Wayland, Mass. Inventor and innovator, beloved husband, father, grandfather and friend passed away peacefully surrounded by love on November 13, 2000. Born May 30th, 1934 in New York City, the son of Beatrice and Harry Ocko, he attended Brooklyn Polytechnic Prep School and graduated from Yale College in 1956 with Bachelors degree in Architecture.
He served as an officer on the USS Cassin Young, peacetime, and married his first wife, Stephanie Goss in 1960. In 1963, he was chosen as one of President Kennedy's five young filmmakers to participate in a program developed with George Stevens, Jr. at the United States Information Agency to make films in developing countries.
From 1964 to 1966, the U.S.I.A. assigned him to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
He left the Foreign Service in 1968 and joined the Education Development Center in Cambridge, MA to develop innovative classroom curricula.
In 1970, he produced and directed a film on the Congo River for the Walt Disney Company. The following year he formed his own company, Ethnographics, to make ethnological films for classroom use. He went on to start Landmark Models, Inc. to produce and sell model kits of historical Americna Architecture. Following this, he worked for several years as an in-house toy inventor for Milton Bradley and then Parker Bros.
In 1985 he received his Masters Degree in Education from Harvard University and joined the MIT Media Lab where he worked to develop a classroom learning system based on the marriage of Lego toys with the Logo computer language. He went on to open Lego Futura's Boston office as the Senior Research Designer where he further developed a Lego system of computerized ''bricks,'' motors and gears that inspired children to strengthen their problem solving skills through creative play.
In 1997, he married Susan Sjoberg and spent the last years of his life deeply in love and living in Wayland, MA. He is survived by his wife Susan, son Peter and grandsons Oscar and Jeremy."
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Steve Ocko and Mitch Resnick make the turtle come back out into the real world for Lego -
"Lego Mindstorms: A History of Educational Robots" by Audrey Watters on "