Corrina Perrone

Programming by example: programming by analogous examples

manipulate the sources or their information, such as the location of their files on a haed drive or the emails in their in-boxes. End-user programming is emerging as a crucial instrument in the daily informationprocessing struggle [8]. Such programming allows customized personal information processing. But few end users have the background, motivation, or time to use traditional programming approaches or the means to hire professional programmers to create programs for them. Simple forms of end-user programming include email filters to clean up email by directing specified emails into separate folders and spreadsheets to explore, say, the total cost of a new house. Programming by example (PBE) is a powerful end-user-programming paradigm enabling users without formal training in programming to create sophisticated programs. PBE environments create programs for end users by observing and recording software behaviors as they manipulate information on the graphical user interface (GUI) level. For example, in Microsoft Word, PBE mechanisms allow users to build macros. Here, we explore the problem of PBE reuse, or how users can reuse old program behavior. A user might find a PBE-generated program useful but may need to either generalize or modify it for a related but different task. Program reuse is a well-known software

Programming by Analogous Examples

Publisher Summary In programming by example (PBE), the representation that the user sees at the graphical user interface (GUI) level may be vastly different from the representation a user is faced with at the program level. In PBE systems, special representations are often used to make the transition between the two levels easier for an end user. These representational features enable programming by analogous examples, which in turn simplify program reuse. Analogies are powerful cognitive mechanisms that people use to construct new knowledge from knowledge already acquired and understood. The combination of some semantic information with structural information has allowed reuse of complex behaviors in the context of interactive simulations. When analogies are used with programming by example (PBE), the result is a new end-user programming paradigm combining the elegance of PBE to create programs with the power of analogies to reuse programs. The combination of PBE with analogies is called programming by analogous examples (PBAE).

WebQuest: substantiating education in edutainment through interactive learning games

Abstract In educational contexts the WWW can be viewed as source of edutainment that is quite effective on the entertainment side because most students are highly motivated to use the web but is much less successful on the educational side. Without a structuring mechanism that allows focus on specific learning domains, the usefulness of the web may be similar to having 500 channels of TV. Learning in these kinds of contexts is not impossible but relies too much on the ability to follow a glut of hyperlinks, and passive information absorption. The effectiveness of the web as a learning tool can be significantly increased by combining it with more constructive tools. These tools should not only allow students to create representations that are interesting to themselves but are also interesting enough to share with other students. This paper presents WebQuest, a system combining the WWW with the notion of an interactive quest game. Instead of just creating their own homepages, that may be interesting to other students for only social reasons, students turn into authors of their own interactive quest games. They set up complex worlds containing interesting landscapes and tricky obstacles linked to real websites. Players of the game answer questions to acquire important objects needed to solve the quest. This approach provides several learning opportunities to author and players of the games. Authors learn by doing. They create the worlds, come up with challenging yet solvable questions, and provide relevant links to clues on the web. The players, in turn, learn from solving the quest. They can use the links provided by the authors as clues but can also follow their own intuition and use the entire web as a resource to solve the quest. Author and players can start a dialog facilitating reflective learning, for instance, helping authors to understand what makes good or bad questions, how much information should be given in a clue, and how to find new topic-related websites. The system is described, roles of teachers and students are outlined, and we report on our initial classroom uses and ongoing development of WebQuest.

Remote exploratoriums: combining network media and design environments

Abstract In an educational context, World Wide Web clients such as NCSA Mosaic® are of limited value because they put learners in the role of information absorbers. Drawing on a museum analogy, learners using Mosaic can be perceived, similar to museum visitors, as passive observers of exhibits. Despite the richness of exhibits in terms of the amount of information as well as the use of multimedia, activity is restricted to navigation through real (museum) or hyper (Mosaic) spaces. More effective learning would include constructive activities that are more engaging than just browsing information spaces. Distance education could be improved by augmenting network media with design environments to create remote exploratoriums that encourage highly interactive, engaged learning experiences. In contrast to classical museums, exploratoriums, such as the one in San Francisco and several childrens museums, feature hands-on learning exhibits that are not only observed but can be actively manipulated. The Agentsheets Remote Exploratorium is a mechanism to facilitate the easy exchange and distribution of interactive educational exhibits through the Internet. Agentsheets is a programming substrate to create design environments. In this paper, we discuss the implications of combining a network medium and a design environment in order to support distance education.

Mr. Rogers Sustainable Neighborhood: a visual language case study for community education

Physical board games and the construction of physical models have been shown to be a valuable vehicle for education and communication, for use in the classroom as well as for issues of collaboration and conflict resolution. However, they are limited by their own physical nature. The use of a physical board game is limited to one location. Our research posed the question: can we bring the benefits of these situation based physical games to a computational medium adding the new benefits of the World Wide Web while preserving the accessibility and usefulness of the games? This case study paper outlines our work on Mr. Rogers Sustainable Neighborhood and its journey from physical board game to a computational version, using the Visual AgenTalk (VAT) visual language, and the Agentsheets based educational system WebQuest. We describe Mr. Rogers Sustainable Neighborhood as a physical game and its stakeholders, and discuss the applicability and effectiveness of the VAT language for this problem.

Remote exploratoriums: combining network media with design environments

In an educational context, World Wide Web clients such as NCSA Mosaic® are of limited value because they put learners in the role of information absorbers. Drawing on a museum analogy, learners using Mosaic can be perceived, similar to museum visitors, as passive observers of exhibits. Despite the richness of exhibits in terms of the amount of information as well as the use of multimedia, activity is restricted to navigation through real (museum) or hyper (Mosaic) spaces. More effective learning would include constructive activities that are more engaging than just browsing information spaces. Distance education could be improved by augmenting network media with design environments to create remote exploratoriums that encourage highly interactive, engaged learning experiences. In contrast to classical museums, exploratoriums, such as the one in San Francisco and several childrens museums, feature handson learning exhibits that are not only observed but can be actively manipulated. The Agentsheets Remote Exploratorium is a mechanism to facilitate the easy exchange and distribution of interactive educational exhibits through the Internet. Agentsheets is a programming substrate to create design environments. In this paper, we discuss the implications of combining a network medium and a design environment in order to support distance education. Remote Exploratoriums: Combining Network Media and Design Environments to Support Engaged Learning