2004/2005 CeNTRE Seminars
2005 CeNTRE Research Seminar Programme
Innovation
Learning using concrete virtual analogs of powerful abstractions: Lessons from ToonTalk, Playground, and WebLabs | Ken Kahn, Institute of Education, London and Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden |
Tuesday 14 June 2005 4.30pm |
Many have extolled the benefits of learning by building and exploring computational models. But typically computer programming requires a mastery of complex computational abstractions. The research I'll be presenting describes a way to replace these abstractions with playful, animated, game-like, virtual objects without sacrificing expressive power. I'll present via live demos three systems that have explored this idea. ToonTalk is a general-purpose concurrent programming language that presents program building blocks in terms of familiar objects.
A ToonTalk programmer trains robots to manipulate boxes containing numbers, text, pictures, sounds, birds, trucks, robots, and other boxes. Birds are the means that program fragments coordinate and communicate. Trucks are used to spawn new sub-computations. The Playground Project provided tools to children 6 to 8 years old enabling them to make their own computer games. Playground built upon ToonTalk. It provided the children with transparent components and behaviours that could be assembled or broken down into for modification and reassembly. The WebLabs Project is providing children 10 to 14 years old with components and learning materials to explore science by building computational models and mathematics by building ToonTalk programs. Children publish their reports which typically include runnable models or programs on the project web site. Other children across Europe read and post public comments on these reports.
Designing for Building and Sharing Knowledge | Richard Noss, Director London Knowledge Lab |
Tuesday 31 May 2005, 4.30pm |
The implications for the design of learning systems are manifold. I will focus here on just two. First, we should try to design learning environments where people can make models of things, either physically or – my focus in this paper – virtually. Second, learners need to experience how to share and critique their models, to talk about interesting mathematical phenomena that underpin them.
Drawing on some recent research projects, I will illustrate the challenges we face in developing new representational infrastructures for expressing a range of ideas, and a prototype system with which students can share – not just the state of their evolving understandings – but working models of what they know.
Agile Development for Demanding Users | John Dale, Assistant Director IT Services, University of Warwick |
Tuesday 1 February 2005, 4.30pm |