from the friendly people who pioneered educational drag and drop programming (AgentSheets) comes AgentCubes, the first 3D creativity tool integrating the creation and programming of 3D shapes with advanced end-user development tools.
Watch this movie and tell me if you think this could have been done with any other tool (in 3 minutes) http://youtu.be/jgiGoLYFA0A
There is next to no real evidence. Indeed, these puzzle piece programming languages are almost 30 years old, e.g., ancient paper.The puzzle piece idea back then did not do the trick. Why should it now?
Of course, syntax is only a very small part of the problem. Semantics is the real challenge. The idea that syntax alone makes programming simple would be like saying "an English sentence needs to have a noun and a verb [that is the syntax]" and then suggesting "now that you know the syntax write a best selling novel"
I guess ignoring my rather hard questions is your way of answering them. Perhaps others should contribute to open source projects. You must be too busy. Also, since when are federally funded projects such as Scratch and squeak free to taxpayers? Your tax money is at work here if you like it or not. What part of "there is a free version of AgentCubes" don't you understand?
Do you really worry about the closed source? When did you contribute code to any of these projects? Have any of these systems actually been tested with thousands of students in schools? Is there proof that they are the motivational across gender and ethnicity? Haven they bee explored wrt actual learning taking place? Can teachers really used them? Do you have a good model for how to create sustainable solutions; you know, the kind that actually pays programmers to program?
I took programming in 3rd and 4th grades. In 3rd grade we started with logo, and then in 4th grade we started writing in BASIC.
That was standard curriculum throughout the State back in the early 80s.
yes, WAS! Programming has been tried before, in some way or another, even in Elementary Schools. However, these programs did not stick. At the high school level there are some CS AP courses but in general they are doing quite terrible especially with female and minority students. At the middle school level there are very few programming related activities. At the elementary school level there is basically nothing in US schools.
Unlike with the programming found in schools in the 80ies there is now some evidence suggesting that middle and elementary school teachers can be trained to sustain programming related activities and that programming can even be introduced into the curriculum. This was never really the case before.
In Conversational Programming your program is executed all the time and annotated. The Bret Victor approach does not scale well in comparison because it tries to compute everything. That works fine for a toy example such as a simple drawing but what if your application has many objects interacting with the user or interacting with each other? Long answer in the paper but the short one is that you need to be able to focus on bits of code relevant to the users as suggested by the user through the selection of objects:
Yes, but there is a big difference. Just about 100% of these users are self selected. In our study we have just about 0% self selected. It is not clear what one can learn from interpreting motivation or learning gains, especially without pre/post tests, from a self selected group. For all we know these users may already be interested or even experienced in programming. The real question is how well students who do not ever plan to show up on the Friday afternoon club or any other after school program, in other words 95% of students, would do.
>> While this may be a useful tool, shilling for some group trying to make a quick buck doesn't seem right.
What ever happened to America? Making a product that costs does not "seem right"! So, who is paying developers, rent and heating? Strange, none of the developers working for me is willing to work for free. There always is a cost and somebody pays it. If somebody is developing software through some federal grant then the tax payers are the ones paying. Federal money is not supposed to be used to just maintain software. Software that is not maintained will disappear sooner or later. Is it really better to use tax money than having people who are the actually beneficiaries pay for the product directly? Oh, but education does not have any money, you may say. If that is really true then we cannot pay teachers anymore either and should just close schools to save even more money.
Looks like nice work but these were not large scale studies by any stretch of the imagination. Moreover, at least according to one of these documents, the gamestar aim is not to teach programming per se but to teach design. That is completely OK, but it also suggests a very different investigation of transfer. Can I design a game about ecologies and will I learn something about ecology in the process? Fundamentally, this sounds mostly like a constructivist model of pedagogy which does make a lot of sense to me. We are more interested in the far transfer of programming concepts, or more precisely, computational thinking skills that get acquired in one design activity, e.g., the design and implementation of a Frogger game and later applied to a completely different design task such as science simulation authoring. I think the research you are pointing to has neither the same aim nor a comparable scope of the work I am referring to.
More generally, my comment was not targeting gamestar. I just wish that people would do some homework before they post. It is actually possible to systematically investigate how well a tool will work in a classroom at motivational, cognitive and educational levels. This is not a poll for your favorite ice cream flavor.
Instead of the monthly armchair conjecture how about some real data? Yes, many of us have played with some tool and found it more of less usable or interesting resulting the obligatory "you should use X because I did too or at least somebody told me that it is cool" but who has actually run some large scale study with thousands of students to see:
1) if they can learn game design
2) what they learn and if what they learn transfers in any way to topics of relevance to schools, e.g., STEM
3) if teachers in a wide range of environments from inner city schools to Native American communities can actually teach it
Short answer: WE HAVE and as far as I can tell (feel free to contradict me) NOBODY ELSE. The study includes levels of motivation, breakdown by gender and ethnicity, computational thinking pattern analysis of the game and simulations produced, exploration of transfer between game design and STEM. And, perhaps most importantly, most of the schools participating (all over the USA) tried it with non self selecting students. In other words, not the geeky Friday afternoon computer club boys. ALL the kids. See some results here:
Most people speculate about motivational and educational benefits of certain tools and programming activities. We actually measure them. Scalable Game Design, using AgentSheets, teaches kids how to make games starting with simple 1980 arcade games such as Frogger and them gradually move on all the way to modern SIMs like games including sophisticated AI. With middle and high schools all around the US we have a close to 50% participation of girls. And don't think this is just for K-12. The curriculum + tool includes activities for ugrad and grad level education as well.
The same arguments that IT education does not work and that there are no compelling solutions are made over and over. This simply is NOT TRUE anymore. If I may be so bold as to plug our own research supported by the US National Science Foundation: the data shows that with the right combination of computational thinking tools, curriculum and pedagogical approaches 1) there is huge IT interest by women 2) this can be done in just about all the schools successfully and 3) there is even early evidence of transfer between game design and STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) of IT skills. We have research data from thousands of students in various communities ranging from inner city schools, remote rural to Native American communities:
http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED520742.pdf
more papers here: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/papers/
AFAIK this is the only approach that has a proven track record for motivating just about all kids in schools (elementary, middle, high) including girls (average ~50%) and providing early evidence of actually relevant skills that can transfer to other school topics such as science. It is used in entire school districts as part of the curriculum. Most importantly, it can be used to make games as well as simulations actually relevant to schools (STEM courses). Some movies showing kids making games and simulations:
- good: you walk them through the design and implementation process and build part of the game. And, YES, this can be done in an hour and with elementary school kids.
- great: have a kid come up and talk it through, with the help of the rest of the class, on how to make the game.
Python is a great language but here is a prediction. Teaching Python in a required class, not the Friday afternoon computer club, at the middle school level: not going to work.
Haven't we seen software like this many times before? Examples include (but are not limited to): Alice, the old GUI used to program Lego Mindstorms, and Labview. If those didn't "take off" in terms of generating interest in programming and computer science, why should we expect this one to be any different?
Actually NO:
With the exception of Labview (which as far as I can tell would be tricky to use to make a game) AgentSheets preceded all these packages.
What is really different now is to have finally found some solid leads on how to make computing education work on schools.
Slashdot Mirror
and the surprising result: air + petrol = petrol
from the friendly people who pioneered educational drag and drop programming (AgentSheets) comes AgentCubes, the first 3D creativity tool integrating the creation and programming of 3D shapes with advanced end-user development tools.
Watch this movie and tell me if you think this could have been done with any other tool (in 3 minutes) http://youtu.be/jgiGoLYFA0A
Have a look at video included in this ACM article describing the use of AgentSheets and AgentCubes as part of the Scalable Game Design project: http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2012/5/148567-programming-goes-back-to-school/fulltext You can see other 9 years olds.
tablet + keyboard = laptop
There is next to no real evidence. Indeed, these puzzle piece programming languages are almost 30 years old, e.g., ancient paper.The puzzle piece idea back then did not do the trick. Why should it now?
Of course, syntax is only a very small part of the problem. Semantics is the real challenge. The idea that syntax alone makes programming simple would be like saying "an English sentence needs to have a noun and a verb [that is the syntax]" and then suggesting "now that you know the syntax write a best selling novel"
I guess ignoring my rather hard questions is your way of answering them. Perhaps others should contribute to open source projects. You must be too busy. Also, since when are federally funded projects such as Scratch and squeak free to taxpayers? Your tax money is at work here if you like it or not. What part of "there is a free version of AgentCubes" don't you understand?
Do you really worry about the closed source? When did you contribute code to any of these projects? Have any of these systems actually been tested with thousands of students in schools? Is there proof that they are the motivational across gender and ethnicity? Haven they bee explored wrt actual learning taking place? Can teachers really used them? Do you have a good model for how to create sustainable solutions; you know, the kind that actually pays programmers to program?
And... there is a free version of AgentCubes (3D)
I took programming in 3rd and 4th grades. In 3rd grade we started with logo, and then in 4th grade we started writing in BASIC.
That was standard curriculum throughout the State back in the early 80s.
yes, WAS! Programming has been tried before, in some way or another, even in Elementary Schools. However, these programs did not stick. At the high school level there are some CS AP courses but in general they are doing quite terrible especially with female and minority students. At the middle school level there are very few programming related activities. At the elementary school level there is basically nothing in US schools.
Unlike with the programming found in schools in the 80ies there is now some evidence suggesting that middle and elementary school teachers can be trained to sustain programming related activities and that programming can even be introduced into the curriculum. This was never really the case before.
http://youtu.be/wqmym7JKWLo
The real issue here is the Flashback is a Java exploit pretending to be a Flash install. Neither of these technologies even exist in iOS.
In Conversational Programming your program is executed all the time and annotated. The Bret Victor approach does not scale well in comparison because it tries to compute everything. That works fine for a toy example such as a simple drawing but what if your application has many objects interacting with the user or interacting with each other? Long answer in the paper but the short one is that you need to be able to focus on bits of code relevant to the users as suggested by the user through the selection of objects:
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/papers/PDF/Conversational-Programming%20VL-hcc2011.pdf http://www.agentsheets.com/Documentation/windows/Reference/conversational_programming.html
Yes, but there is a big difference. Just about 100% of these users are self selected. In our study we have just about 0% self selected. It is not clear what one can learn from interpreting motivation or learning gains, especially without pre/post tests, from a self selected group. For all we know these users may already be interested or even experienced in programming. The real question is how well students who do not ever plan to show up on the Friday afternoon club or any other after school program, in other words 95% of students, would do.
>> While this may be a useful tool, shilling for some group trying to make a quick buck doesn't seem right.
What ever happened to America? Making a product that costs does not "seem right"! So, who is paying developers, rent and heating? Strange, none of the developers working for me is willing to work for free. There always is a cost and somebody pays it. If somebody is developing software through some federal grant then the tax payers are the ones paying. Federal money is not supposed to be used to just maintain software. Software that is not maintained will disappear sooner or later. Is it really better to use tax money than having people who are the actually beneficiaries pay for the product directly? Oh, but education does not have any money, you may say. If that is really true then we cannot pay teachers anymore either and should just close schools to save even more money.
Looks like nice work but these were not large scale studies by any stretch of the imagination. Moreover, at least according to one of these documents, the gamestar aim is not to teach programming per se but to teach design. That is completely OK, but it also suggests a very different investigation of transfer. Can I design a game about ecologies and will I learn something about ecology in the process? Fundamentally, this sounds mostly like a constructivist model of pedagogy which does make a lot of sense to me. We are more interested in the far transfer of programming concepts, or more precisely, computational thinking skills that get acquired in one design activity, e.g., the design and implementation of a Frogger game and later applied to a completely different design task such as science simulation authoring. I think the research you are pointing to has neither the same aim nor a comparable scope of the work I am referring to.
More generally, my comment was not targeting gamestar. I just wish that people would do some homework before they post. It is actually possible to systematically investigate how well a tool will work in a classroom at motivational, cognitive and educational levels. This is not a poll for your favorite ice cream flavor.
Instead of the monthly armchair conjecture how about some real data? Yes, many of us have played with some tool and found it more of less usable or interesting resulting the obligatory "you should use X because I did too or at least somebody told me that it is cool" but who has actually run some large scale study with thousands of students to see:
1) if they can learn game design
2) what they learn and if what they learn transfers in any way to topics of relevance to schools, e.g., STEM
3) if teachers in a wide range of environments from inner city schools to Native American communities can actually teach it
Short answer: WE HAVE and as far as I can tell (feel free to contradict me) NOBODY ELSE. The study includes levels of motivation, breakdown by gender and ethnicity, computational thinking pattern analysis of the game and simulations produced, exploration of transfer between game design and STEM. And, perhaps most importantly, most of the schools participating (all over the USA) tried it with non self selecting students. In other words, not the geeky Friday afternoon computer club boys. ALL the kids. See some results here:
http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/wiki/Publications
It does work and there is even, gasp, scientific evidence.
See teachers being trained: http://www.9news.com/news/local/article/202987/222/Teachers-play-video-games-for-science-
look at data: http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/
Most people speculate about motivational and educational benefits of certain tools and programming activities. We actually measure them. Scalable Game Design, using AgentSheets, teaches kids how to make games starting with simple 1980 arcade games such as Frogger and them gradually move on all the way to modern SIMs like games including sophisticated AI. With middle and high schools all around the US we have a close to 50% participation of girls. And don't think this is just for K-12. The curriculum + tool includes activities for ugrad and grad level education as well.
- Don't think this is possible? See some teacher tranining in action: http://www.9news.com/news/local/article/202987/222/Teachers-play-video-games-for-science-
- check out research data: http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/
you have some options:
A: talk about CS concepts through PowerPoint slides. Result: you will bore them to death.
B: have them build a game. Yes, this actually can be done. I know this because we have been doing this with thousands of kids and have been training teachers to do the same. Here is an example activity: http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/gamewiki/index.php/Frogger_Design
I just visited one of the first schools in Brazil implementing Scalable Game Design. Its working wonderfully!
The same arguments that IT education does not work and that there are no compelling solutions are made over and over. This simply is NOT TRUE anymore. If I may be so bold as to plug our own research supported by the US National Science Foundation: the data shows that with the right combination of computational thinking tools, curriculum and pedagogical approaches 1) there is huge IT interest by women 2) this can be done in just about all the schools successfully and 3) there is even early evidence of transfer between game design and STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) of IT skills. We have research data from thousands of students in various communities ranging from inner city schools, remote rural to Native American communities: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED520742.pdf more papers here: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/papers/
AFAIK this is the only approach that has a proven track record for motivating just about all kids in schools (elementary, middle, high) including girls (average ~50%) and providing early evidence of actually relevant skills that can transfer to other school topics such as science. It is used in entire school districts as part of the curriculum. Most importantly, it can be used to make games as well as simulations actually relevant to schools (STEM courses). Some movies showing kids making games and simulations:
http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/gamewiki/index.php/Videos
If you have one hour do this: hook up AgentSheets to a projector and start making a game (e.g., a frogger like one: http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/gamewiki/index.php/Frogger_Design)
- good: you walk them through the design and implementation process and build part of the game. And, YES, this can be done in an hour and with elementary school kids.
- great: have a kid come up and talk it through, with the help of the rest of the class, on how to make the game.
Have a look at teacher created instructions: http://schools.bvsd.org/aspencreek2/computer/Frogger2/frogger_tutorial.swf
The funding only comes to an end for this one particular research. Teachers will continue to use it and more teacher development will happen.
Python is a great language but here is a prediction. Teaching Python in a required class, not the Friday afternoon computer club, at the middle school level: not going to work.
Do try AgentSheets as it does cover the range from simple to use to make your first simple game all the way to advanced games include sophisticated AI. Have a look here at some of the more advanced game: http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/sgda/event/universityofcoloradoboulder/2011csci7000/finalprojectdesign/ All just produced in about a week (don't look at the graphics).
How can you make unqualified claims that Educational Technology has failed where there is evidence that it works?
Haven't we seen software like this many times before? Examples include (but are not limited to): Alice, the old GUI used to program Lego Mindstorms, and Labview. If those didn't "take off" in terms of generating interest in programming and computer science, why should we expect this one to be any different?
Actually NO:
With the exception of Labview (which as far as I can tell would be tricky to use to make a game) AgentSheets preceded all these packages.
What is really different now is to have finally found some solid leads on how to make computing education work on schools.