AgentSheets: Learning Programming, for middle-schoolers
The Scalable Game Design project is aimed at getting computer science into middle schools, to get kids interested in information technology through their natural interest in games. A principal software tool of the project is AgentSheets, which lets you make your own simulation games without learning the syntax of a programming language.
If you know a kid in middle school who wants to make his or her own game, or just learn about programming, I recommend that you take a look at this!
The general concept is a bit like some systems you may have seen before, such as the visual programming languages provided with Lego Mindstorms. However, this requires no special hardware, and the specifics look a lot more interesting and flexible to me than anything I’ve seen along these lines.
An example of what you can do is the classic arcade game Frogger (developed by Konami for Sega/Gremlin in 1981). This tutorial shows how to do it in AgentSheets.
There is a three-minute movie showing kids using AgentSheets. It gives a good sense of the kind of game and the level of complexity that AgentSheets is suitable for (although it doesn’t demonstrate programming itself).
You can also read research papers about the project.
To try it out, you can download a free trial version with a ten-day license, for MacOS X or Windows. It costs $120 in single units, less for educators or if you get ten licenses.
As it happens, it’s written in Common Lisp, which is how I came to hear about it. But that doesn’t matter as far as using it is concerned.
The principal investigator is Prof. Alexander Repenning of the University of Colorado. He has worked at Xerox PARC and HP, and he has collaborated with researchers at the Epistemology and Learning Group of the MIT Media Lab, LOGO, and SRI to explore programmable LOGO toys. He has been involved in many other projects as well.
Thanks for telling me about this, Alex!
January 10th, 2009 at 12:18 am
OK, I have to ask..
When will the XO version be (freely?) available?
I’ve seen the software hoarding mentality kill other computing environments, like Boxer. Alice is freely available from CMU, and I know that Agentsheets does other things, but you have to convince me why I’d ask my school system to pay for it.
January 10th, 2009 at 8:24 am
I have no idea; you could ask Alex Repenning. However, from everything I’m hearing, the engineering team working on the OLPC is drifting away. I have an OLPC, because I thought it would become a major software platform, and because there were so many other cool things about it. But a lot of them never got done and it doesn’t look like they will. So I’ve put it aside. It would be great if the project realized at least its technical aims, as well as its educational aims, and I hope I’m wrong to be pessimistic.
January 23rd, 2009 at 4:53 am
Looks very promising. I’m interested to see how good it’s 3d technology is.
January 23rd, 2009 at 6:48 pm
| but you have to convince me why I’d ask my school system to pay for it.
Free tools do not imply free solutions. A lot of research has gone into AgentSheet. Do take this challenge and try to make a game (http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/wiki/Frogger_Design) in just 2 hours. Alice may be free but does it actually work for game design? Even the Alice people seem to have given up on the idea of using Alice for game design and are focusing on story telling. We have not seen any evidence that game design is too hard or that the girls do not want to do it. If you use the right tool game design works quite well. Also, the Alice book is not free. All of the AgentSheets materials are free. If there would be a way to keep software usable and maintained for free I would be happy to explore it.
Another thing. The real cost is teacher training. With a site license a single hour of a teacher wasted would probably cost more than a copy of AgentSheets.
all the best