The challenge is to find the right kind of toy that is gender neutral but also to use a certain pedagogy, such as inquiry based approaches, which can have a big influence on broadening participation.
No, that does not work. The Scalable Game Design project - discussed in the article - is specifically addressing the problem of broadening participation, e.g., the lack of interest in CS by girls. In other words, the lack of interest is precisely the problem. Our research (with over 10,000 students from all around the USA) suggests that MOST students, boys and girls, CAN be interested in CS through games and can advance from games from STEM simulations. Also, Scalable Game Design is a curriculum, not an afterschool program, that has been integrated into middle schools and even some elementary schools. The key is to 1) find time in existing curriculum to get started (e.g., in keyboarding and powerpointing types of courses) and to 2) transition to relevant STEM topics by teaching kids how to create science simulations. This is part of the new Next Generation Science Standards.
how about an even simpler explanation: tenured faculty tend NOT to teach introductory courses. If they do then typically they have to because there is nobody else willing or capable. The result: a less than completely excited teacher.
This makes NO sense for kids in classrooms. Without the ability to run silly but required pieces of software (including the new US testing SW) and Wifi students would need a Raspberry Pi IN ADDITION to some Mac or PC. Quite simply, this is not going to happen because it would mean schools would have to spend more without getting more.
The Loga's Run world, with a maximum age of 30, would represent of median age of 15. Compared to Silicon Valley, with a median age of about 30, this would be half.
Does not compute. Conclusion: Silicon Valley in 2013 DOES NOT Resemble Logan's Run In 2274
No, lets not because this turns out to be a bad idea and we have data for this. The self teaching route reaches only an incredibly small percentage of kids. More importantly, our data suggests that we can and SHOULD expose kids to computational thinking/CS/Programming at school as early as elementary school level because they actually enjoy it and it helps them with other school topics. By doing so we find that many students, particularly girls and underrepresented students, will get interested in the topic but without the "forced" school exposure they would have never considered exploring this topics by themselves. In many cases we find that not only are they getting interested in CS but actually open up more generally to school.
Some of that data here: http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/gamewiki/images/c/c7/One_Pager_CE21_CT4TC.pdf
it is about time to enable WebGL in the browser. WebGL runs fine in Safari on Macs and iOS Safari but is currently only enabled in mobile safari for iAds. In other words, it does work but is only enabled for the kinds of things that I need the least, i.e., ads.
We have been helping running computer clubs for about 20 years and have documented the things that work and don't. Creativity and ownership are key. Simply hacking Java code will go nowhere. Have them build games where they can also build their own 2D/3D artwork. Use tools like AgentSheets and AgentCubes that include powerful 2D/23D authoring and end-user debugging tools to motivate them and help with the programming. Otherwise, as you already see, you will quickly loose your audience.
Better Idea: Forget computer clubs! If your goal is to expose students to computer science then the computer club idea goes nowhere. This is not an opinion. We have the data. You will get few girls, rarely any minority students and the overall percentage of students participating is dismal. Try the Scalable Game Design curriculum http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/ You can have your teachers do this and expose nearly 100% of the students at just about any middle schools or high school. With this strategy we get ~300 students per school and year instead of the ~15 computer club ones.
One can argue about the value of localized languages. For instance the localization of Pascal as educational programming language into German and French turned out to be a big flop. Of course GUI components of some IDE probably need to be localized. AgentSheets is localizable and has been localized in a number of languages but not Dutch. Even more important is the localization of tutorials. You can find some here: http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/wiki/Frogger_Design
There is a mix of native localization (good) and Google translated ones (not so good).
The other point is that perhaps your daughter just is not excited about the making simple 2D animations and would like to make complete 3D games including 3D characters that she can create? You may want to give AgentCubes a chance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GWcb3aG2w0&feature=player_embedded
This runs as desktop application or in browsers via HTML5 (no Flash no Java) site even on cheap $200 Chromebooks.
A big point was made about creativity and the passion of experienced programmers. Then 40 students were recruited (how?) for an experimental study and given one hour to poke around in Java code. I don't quite see how the observations made can be interpreted as compelling evidence for the conclusions reached. Where exactly was the creativity? The game seems more like LEGO Star Wars, as opposed to just regular LEGO, with all the pieces are given. Could they make their own characters from scratch? It did not seem so.
This idea that USA = World is really getting old. Yes, he was a great guy. I am sad he is gone but "arguably the world's most famous film critic"! What does that even mean? In how many of the 200 countries was he known? Are you following the international scene of film critics really closely and keeping score? Would it be really horrible to just say something like "arguably the USA's most famous film critic"
AgentCubes/Inflatable Icons allows you do create 3D shapes very quickly with no 3D modeling background. Paint images in 2D and turn into 3D. You indicated that you are struggling with 3D tools such as Blender and even Sketchup. I guess I don't know what kinds of shapes and what kind of quality of 3D shapes you have in mind. We have been exploring for some time why many people have problems using these kinds of tools. The short answer is that these tools are aimed at typically professional 3D designers or, more generally, at people with a lot of time at their hands to learn an interface with a steep learning curve. If your goal is to produce 3D shapes of the Pixar level quality then there just is not way around these kinds of tools. If, on the other hand, you just need to build very simple shapes that you can produce in, say, a couple of minutes, and maybe print that on a 3D printer then perhaps Inflatable Icons may do the trick.
A benchmark with Inflatable Icons was that if it takes more than a minute to explain how to make a 3D shape it is too complex. The idea is to make casual 3D tools. We have tested this with many kids and it works great. The short version of the concept is that practically all 3D tools work on the "First Shape then Paint" while we have flipped this around to be "First Paint then Shape" You are basically drawing a 2D image first using a Photoshop-like editor. Then you use tools including inflation to turn then 2D image into a 3D shape.
A way to bring 3D to the next level will be to make 3D authoring fundamentally more accessible to end users. Imagine, if 3D authoring would be so simple that kids without any modeling and programming background could make their own 3D games and run them in browsers. Unfortunately, the 3D authoring tools that we have are mostly aimed at professional 3D creators. These are great tools but have typically steep learning curves. What we need are Casual 3D Authoring tools. We have explored new ideas of casual 3D authoring and have found that is many cases it can be just as simple if not simpler to have kids make 3D than 2D. As part of the Scalable Game Design project we are running a study with over 10,000 (mostly) middle school students learning about computer science through game design. We have started to use AgentCubes, our Casual 3D Authoring tool, to see if students are motivated and capable to make 3D games. The answer is yes and yes. Look for the 3D games built by students here: http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/arcade/
The EU is apparently having too much time making up problems. Just about EVERY appliance in a kitchen is more dangerous than a MacPro. Have you every used a kitchen mixer? Rotating blades hooked up to a high power motor, no protection, no case... We have a number of MacPros. You really have to open up the case and want to stick your finger in there. Even if you would, these motors are low power. The potential injury would be minimal compared to a mixer. This makes no sense. Is the European Union turning into Fire Marshall Bill?
... to get supercool authoring. As part of AgentCubes, a 3D creativity tool supporting Casual 3D design, we have created a new kind of a 3D authoring tool. Casual 3D, similarly to Voxel or Minecraft is not aimed at Pixar animators but at people who have not done any 3D authoring before and would not want to spend more than a minute to get started. Imagine combining Inflatable Icons with Voxel. One could build some pretty cool worlds and program them. You can see an early draft of a short demo video below. I am guessing that AgentCubes may be using similar technology as Voxel. Every game/simulation is turned into a HTML5/WebGL version using the Three.js game engine.
The programming built in to AgentCubes is accessible even to young kinds. You can see and run some samples here (the WebGL part is still alpha). The 2D games are Java, the 3D ones are in Javascript and WebGL: http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/arcade/
If you are ready to have the students move on from making simple animations in Scratch perhaps to making games in 2D and 3D you may want to check out AgentCubes http://www.agentsheets.com/agentcubes/ Like BYOB, you can make your own methods, use recursion, etc.
ps: what kind of class was this? Is this an after school program? Were the students self selected?
I have a couple of more references that I could dig up again but here is one about generating Sokoban levels: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=646964.759857 Notice the year: 1996. This is a little dated.
Working on some joint research I visited the main LEGO Billund Denmark site years before the big crisis. As part of a tour I was shown an enshrined list of commandments created by the founders. This list captured the fundamental philosophy of good, creative toys. I remember being deeply impressed with the foresight of the founders. But I also remember that there was a rule that was explicitly against the idea of LEGO ever to create human like characters that would resemble true or fictional characters from popular culture. The idea was that the characters should remain generic and in the eye of the kid playing with it could turn into anything, anybody they wanted to. Fast forward to the current situation with LEGO licensing tons of characters from Lucas Art and others. Now LEGO is saved because it give they kids the Darth Vader etc. characters “they want”.
There are many ways to think about this. I’d say acting directly against the explicit philosophy of your founders is definitely a sell out. On the other hand, what choice did they have? I wonder if the list of commandments is still on public display in Denmark or if it got moved into some dark drawer. Does anybody have a copy?
How could the need to support many different hw/sw requirements be possibly an advantage? Testing alone becomes a nightmare. The percentage of users running the latest, unmodified, i.e., Google version, of version of Android is really small. As a developer you would have to emulate just about all these high and low end platforms. Good luck with that.
Probability of failure: I like the idea of OSS but if one thinks of it as a software development approach/methodology/philosophy, or whatever you want to call it, and would look at the big picture of success and failure cases one would have to draw a pretty bleak conclusion. It does not seem to work very well on average! Yes, every proponent of OSS will produce a nice list of some impressive OSS projects and certainly Android could be considered THE poster child of OSS. But for each successful OSS project there are 10,000 dead or semi dead ones. Imagine any other field with these odds. Imagine for instance bridge design. If only one out of 10,000 bridges designed and implemented would be actually used or usable, that would be terrible.
Innovation: Also, take that 10 most successful OSS project list and remove all the items that are OSS projects that are highly inspired by non OSS products predating them (e.g., Lunix/Unix, Gimp/Photoshop, OpenOffice/Office, Android/iOS,... ). I am not necessarily against these kinds of projects but it is really hard to consider them innovative. Now what are you left with? The answer is not much.
As an approach OSS has not worked well on average and nothing has really changed over the years. There is no real trend here. The fact that there are some, very few, truly successful, OSS projects now could simple be the result of the fact that there are just MORE OSS projects. In other words, the average chance of an OSS to have really impact has not improved at all. This is simply a number game with no qualitative shift of any kind. Also, lets not kid ourselves. Most end users really care about the FREE part of FOSS and not the fact that they could access or change the source. They want Foss not fOSS.
Are the successful projects successful because of OSS or in spite of it? The answer to that is less clear that is should be. As a user, for instance, I may or may not like Linux for desktop. The fact that it is free is completely irrelevant to me because I value my time. If Windows or OSX works more efficiently for me just a little bit I will not hesitate one second to buy either one. However, and more importantly, as a developer, the idea of developing a product for an OS that already is a niche product (which would be ok) but then split into however many distros makes Linux a non starter. I have no interest nor the capacity to track all these versions. The more conceptual question is if there is an intrinsic force to OSS that makes it more likely to fork into different versions compared to their commercial versions. As far as I can tell the answer is yes. For developers and end users this is ultimately not a great thing. Even OSS projects with good control, e.g., Android, are becoming fragmented in ways that are gradually turning into a problem for developers and ultimately for end users.
Slashdot Mirror
The challenge is to find the right kind of toy that is gender neutral but also to use a certain pedagogy, such as inquiry based approaches, which can have a big influence on broadening participation.
No, that does not work. The Scalable Game Design project - discussed in the article - is specifically addressing the problem of broadening participation, e.g., the lack of interest in CS by girls. In other words, the lack of interest is precisely the problem. Our research (with over 10,000 students from all around the USA) suggests that MOST students, boys and girls, CAN be interested in CS through games and can advance from games from STEM simulations. Also, Scalable Game Design is a curriculum, not an afterschool program, that has been integrated into middle schools and even some elementary schools. The key is to 1) find time in existing curriculum to get started (e.g., in keyboarding and powerpointing types of courses) and to 2) transition to relevant STEM topics by teaching kids how to create science simulations. This is part of the new Next Generation Science Standards.
how about an even simpler explanation: tenured faculty tend NOT to teach introductory courses. If they do then typically they have to because there is nobody else willing or capable. The result: a less than completely excited teacher.
This makes NO sense for kids in classrooms. Without the ability to run silly but required pieces of software (including the new US testing SW) and Wifi students would need a Raspberry Pi IN ADDITION to some Mac or PC. Quite simply, this is not going to happen because it would mean schools would have to spend more without getting more.
or how about "Post-PCWorld" ?
Then most people will not care to steel it.
The Loga's Run world, with a maximum age of 30, would represent of median age of 15. Compared to Silicon Valley, with a median age of about 30, this would be half. Does not compute. Conclusion: Silicon Valley in 2013 DOES NOT Resemble Logan's Run In 2274
No, lets not because this turns out to be a bad idea and we have data for this. The self teaching route reaches only an incredibly small percentage of kids. More importantly, our data suggests that we can and SHOULD expose kids to computational thinking/CS/Programming at school as early as elementary school level because they actually enjoy it and it helps them with other school topics. By doing so we find that many students, particularly girls and underrepresented students, will get interested in the topic but without the "forced" school exposure they would have never considered exploring this topics by themselves. In many cases we find that not only are they getting interested in CS but actually open up more generally to school. Some of that data here: http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/gamewiki/images/c/c7/One_Pager_CE21_CT4TC.pdf
it is about time to enable WebGL in the browser. WebGL runs fine in Safari on Macs and iOS Safari but is currently only enabled in mobile safari for iAds. In other words, it does work but is only enabled for the kinds of things that I need the least, i.e., ads.
We have been helping running computer clubs for about 20 years and have documented the things that work and don't. Creativity and ownership are key. Simply hacking Java code will go nowhere. Have them build games where they can also build their own 2D/3D artwork. Use tools like AgentSheets and AgentCubes that include powerful 2D/23D authoring and end-user debugging tools to motivate them and help with the programming. Otherwise, as you already see, you will quickly loose your audience.
Here is some research data: http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/gamewiki/images/4/44/Will_It_Stick-submit_CR.pdf
AgentCubes in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2GWcb3aG2w0
Better Idea: Forget computer clubs! If your goal is to expose students to computer science then the computer club idea goes nowhere. This is not an opinion. We have the data. You will get few girls, rarely any minority students and the overall percentage of students participating is dismal. Try the Scalable Game Design curriculum http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/ You can have your teachers do this and expose nearly 100% of the students at just about any middle schools or high school. With this strategy we get ~300 students per school and year instead of the ~15 computer club ones.
One can argue about the value of localized languages. For instance the localization of Pascal as educational programming language into German and French turned out to be a big flop. Of course GUI components of some IDE probably need to be localized. AgentSheets is localizable and has been localized in a number of languages but not Dutch. Even more important is the localization of tutorials. You can find some here: http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/wiki/Frogger_Design
There is a mix of native localization (good) and Google translated ones (not so good).
The other point is that perhaps your daughter just is not excited about the making simple 2D animations and would like to make complete 3D games including 3D characters that she can create? You may want to give AgentCubes a chance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GWcb3aG2w0&feature=player_embedded
This runs as desktop application or in browsers via HTML5 (no Flash no Java) site even on cheap $200 Chromebooks.
A big point was made about creativity and the passion of experienced programmers. Then 40 students were recruited (how?) for an experimental study and given one hour to poke around in Java code. I don't quite see how the observations made can be interpreted as compelling evidence for the conclusions reached. Where exactly was the creativity? The game seems more like LEGO Star Wars, as opposed to just regular LEGO, with all the pieces are given. Could they make their own characters from scratch? It did not seem so.
This idea that USA = World is really getting old. Yes, he was a great guy. I am sad he is gone but "arguably the world's most famous film critic"! What does that even mean? In how many of the 200 countries was he known? Are you following the international scene of film critics really closely and keeping score? Would it be really horrible to just say something like "arguably the USA's most famous film critic"
AgentCubes/Inflatable Icons allows you do create 3D shapes very quickly with no 3D modeling background. Paint images in 2D and turn into 3D. You indicated that you are struggling with 3D tools such as Blender and even Sketchup. I guess I don't know what kinds of shapes and what kind of quality of 3D shapes you have in mind. We have been exploring for some time why many people have problems using these kinds of tools. The short answer is that these tools are aimed at typically professional 3D designers or, more generally, at people with a lot of time at their hands to learn an interface with a steep learning curve. If your goal is to produce 3D shapes of the Pixar level quality then there just is not way around these kinds of tools. If, on the other hand, you just need to build very simple shapes that you can produce in, say, a couple of minutes, and maybe print that on a 3D printer then perhaps Inflatable Icons may do the trick.
A benchmark with Inflatable Icons was that if it takes more than a minute to explain how to make a 3D shape it is too complex. The idea is to make casual 3D tools. We have tested this with many kids and it works great. The short version of the concept is that practically all 3D tools work on the "First Shape then Paint" while we have flipped this around to be "First Paint then Shape" You are basically drawing a 2D image first using a Photoshop-like editor. Then you use tools including inflation to turn then 2D image into a 3D shape.
video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GWcb3aG2w0&feature=player_embedded
sample Inflatable Icons (you can even edit them in the browser): http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/arcade/
If you like Lisp you should check out AgentCubes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GWcb3aG2w0&feature=player_embedded
A way to bring 3D to the next level will be to make 3D authoring fundamentally more accessible to end users. Imagine, if 3D authoring would be so simple that kids without any modeling and programming background could make their own 3D games and run them in browsers. Unfortunately, the 3D authoring tools that we have are mostly aimed at professional 3D creators. These are great tools but have typically steep learning curves. What we need are Casual 3D Authoring tools. We have explored new ideas of casual 3D authoring and have found that is many cases it can be just as simple if not simpler to have kids make 3D than 2D. As part of the Scalable Game Design project we are running a study with over 10,000 (mostly) middle school students learning about computer science through game design. We have started to use AgentCubes, our Casual 3D Authoring tool, to see if students are motivated and capable to make 3D games. The answer is yes and yes. Look for the 3D games built by students here: http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/arcade/
This shows how the tools are used but we have also a 100% Web-based version. And, yes, there are free versions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GWcb3aG2w0
true but the EU appears to be going back in time ;-)
The EU is apparently having too much time making up problems. Just about EVERY appliance in a kitchen is more dangerous than a MacPro. Have you every used a kitchen mixer? Rotating blades hooked up to a high power motor, no protection, no case... We have a number of MacPros. You really have to open up the case and want to stick your finger in there. Even if you would, these motors are low power. The potential injury would be minimal compared to a mixer. This makes no sense. Is the European Union turning into Fire Marshall Bill?
... to get supercool authoring. As part of AgentCubes, a 3D creativity tool supporting Casual 3D design, we have created a new kind of a 3D authoring tool. Casual 3D, similarly to Voxel or Minecraft is not aimed at Pixar animators but at people who have not done any 3D authoring before and would not want to spend more than a minute to get started. Imagine combining Inflatable Icons with Voxel. One could build some pretty cool worlds and program them. You can see an early draft of a short demo video below. I am guessing that AgentCubes may be using similar technology as Voxel. Every game/simulation is turned into a HTML5/WebGL version using the Three.js game engine.
draft of AgentCubes video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85CMrbvIYc8&feature=youtu.be
The programming built in to AgentCubes is accessible even to young kinds. You can see and run some samples here (the WebGL part is still alpha). The 2D games are Java, the 3D ones are in Javascript and WebGL: http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/arcade/
If you are ready to have the students move on from making simple animations in Scratch perhaps to making games in 2D and 3D you may want to check out AgentCubes http://www.agentsheets.com/agentcubes/ Like BYOB, you can make your own methods, use recursion, etc.
ps: what kind of class was this? Is this an after school program? Were the students self selected?
I have a couple of more references that I could dig up again but here is one about generating Sokoban levels: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=646964.759857 Notice the year: 1996. This is a little dated.
Working on some joint research I visited the main LEGO Billund Denmark site years before the big crisis. As part of a tour I was shown an enshrined list of commandments created by the founders. This list captured the fundamental philosophy of good, creative toys. I remember being deeply impressed with the foresight of the founders. But I also remember that there was a rule that was explicitly against the idea of LEGO ever to create human like characters that would resemble true or fictional characters from popular culture. The idea was that the characters should remain generic and in the eye of the kid playing with it could turn into anything, anybody they wanted to. Fast forward to the current situation with LEGO licensing tons of characters from Lucas Art and others. Now LEGO is saved because it give they kids the Darth Vader etc. characters “they want”.
There are many ways to think about this. I’d say acting directly against the explicit philosophy of your founders is definitely a sell out. On the other hand, what choice did they have? I wonder if the list of commandments is still on public display in Denmark or if it got moved into some dark drawer. Does anybody have a copy?
I completely agree. All the mission critical parts are NOT Lego.
How could the need to support many different hw/sw requirements be possibly an advantage? Testing alone becomes a nightmare. The percentage of users running the latest, unmodified, i.e., Google version, of version of Android is really small. As a developer you would have to emulate just about all these high and low end platforms. Good luck with that.
Probability of failure: I like the idea of OSS but if one thinks of it as a software development approach/methodology/philosophy, or whatever you want to call it, and would look at the big picture of success and failure cases one would have to draw a pretty bleak conclusion. It does not seem to work very well on average! Yes, every proponent of OSS will produce a nice list of some impressive OSS projects and certainly Android could be considered THE poster child of OSS. But for each successful OSS project there are 10,000 dead or semi dead ones. Imagine any other field with these odds. Imagine for instance bridge design. If only one out of 10,000 bridges designed and implemented would be actually used or usable, that would be terrible.
Innovation: Also, take that 10 most successful OSS project list and remove all the items that are OSS projects that are highly inspired by non OSS products predating them (e.g., Lunix/Unix, Gimp/Photoshop, OpenOffice/Office, Android/iOS, ... ). I am not necessarily against these kinds of projects but it is really hard to consider them innovative. Now what are you left with? The answer is not much.
As an approach OSS has not worked well on average and nothing has really changed over the years. There is no real trend here. The fact that there are some, very few, truly successful, OSS projects now could simple be the result of the fact that there are just MORE OSS projects. In other words, the average chance of an OSS to have really impact has not improved at all. This is simply a number game with no qualitative shift of any kind. Also, lets not kid ourselves. Most end users really care about the FREE part of FOSS and not the fact that they could access or change the source. They want Foss not fOSS.
Are the successful projects successful because of OSS or in spite of it? The answer to that is less clear that is should be. As a user, for instance, I may or may not like Linux for desktop. The fact that it is free is completely irrelevant to me because I value my time. If Windows or OSX works more efficiently for me just a little bit I will not hesitate one second to buy either one. However, and more importantly, as a developer, the idea of developing a product for an OS that already is a niche product (which would be ok) but then split into however many distros makes Linux a non starter. I have no interest nor the capacity to track all these versions. The more conceptual question is if there is an intrinsic force to OSS that makes it more likely to fork into different versions compared to their commercial versions. As far as I can tell the answer is yes. For developers and end users this is ultimately not a great thing. Even OSS projects with good control, e.g., Android, are becoming fragmented in ways that are gradually turning into a problem for developers and ultimately for end users.