Daniel Wendel

The Simulation Cycle: Combining Games, Simulations, Engineering and Science Using StarLogo TNG

StarLogo The Next Generation (TNG) enables secondary school students and teachers to model decentralized systems through agent-based programming. TNGs inclusion of a three-dimensional graphical environment provides the capacity to create games and simulation models with a first-person perspective. The authors theorize that student learning of complex systems and simulations can be motivated and improved by transforming simulation models of complex systems phenomena (specifically this study examines systems including epidemics and Newtonian motion) into games. Through this transformation students interact with the model in new ways and increase their learning of both specific content knowledge and general processes such as inquiry, problem solving and creative thinking. During this study several methods for connecting the simulations to game dynamics were tried, ranging from student-created games, to altering existing games, to students playing premade games. This article presents the results of research data from two years of curriculum development and piloting in northern Massachusetts science classrooms to demonstrate the successes and challenges of integrating simulations and games. This article also explores the results of these interventions in terms of ease of implementation, student motivation and student learning.

Designing Computer-Supported Complex Systems Curricula for the Next Generation Science Standards in High School Science Classrooms

We present a curriculum and instruction framework for computer-supported teaching and learning about complex systems in high school science classrooms. This work responds to a need in K-12 science education research and practice for the articulation of design features for classroom instruction that can address the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) recently launched in the USA. We outline the features of the framework, including curricular relevance, cognitively rich pedagogies, computational tools for teaching and learning, and the development of content expertise, and provide examples of how the framework is translated into practice. We follow this up with evidence from a preliminary study conducted with 10 teachers and 361 students, aimed at understanding the extent to which students learned from the activities. Results demonstrated gains in students’ complex systems understanding and biology content knowledge. In interviews, students identified influences of various aspects of the curriculum and instruction framework on their learning.

Blocks-based programming languages: simplifying programming for different audiences with different goals

In this panel, the moderator, who has expertise in computer science education and HCI, but with no ties to any particular blocks-based programming environment in particular, will provide a brief overview of the state of the field of visual programming for education generally, and blocks-based visual programming environments and the languages that go with them more specifically. As early as in 1986, blocks-based visual programming environments were conceived of and built as research studies (Glinert & Smith, 1986)). However, the last five to ten years have seen a proliferation of these kinds of programming languages. Scratch and Alice are probably the most widely known of these programming interfaces, but there are many. Among these, many share common traits: the goal of simplifying the syntax of programming, a related goal of making what were once difficult tasks relegated to arcane languages simpler, and often another related goal of opening computer programming up to a wider audience than has recently traditionally engaged in programming activities. The moderator will be followed by four panelists, representing four blocks-based programming environments that share these affordances, but which more interestingly, are distinct in a number of ways. These panelists, experts in MIT App Inventor, Scratch, Looking Glass, and ToolBlox, respectively, will each have ten minutes to discuss their respective language and the possibility-space it aims to simplify. Specifically, each language will be examined from three perspectives: the reason the tool was created, the target audience for the tool, and how the tool engages those users in computational thinking and learning to program. The moderator will then lead a substantive discussion with the audience and panel members on the material presented.

Thinking in blocks: Implications of using abstract syntax trees as the underlying program model

This paper examines the implications of using Abstract Syntax Trees (ASTs) as the underlying model for program editors and source control. For editors, working at the level of the AST enables error prevention, efficient auto-completion, and seamless use of multiple representations (e.g. blocks-to-text-to-blocks). An AST-based system also lends itself to both real-time and asynchronous collaborative editing, through intention-preserving algorithms much simpler than Operational Transformations. AST-based asynchronous collaborative editing makes several improvements to source control compared to Git, notably: reducing conflicts even in same-position edits, and eliminating diffs (and therefore conflicts) due to changes in formatting, spacing, or method ordering. Even text-based languages can reap these benefits, simply by changing the underlying program representation from text to AST.