In research about the Internet, too much attention is paid to its ability to provide access to information. This thesis argues that the Internet can be used not just as a conduit for information, but as a context for learning through community-supported collaborative construction. A "constructionist" approach to use of the Internet makes particularly good use of its educational potential. The Internet provides opportunities to move beyond the creation of constructionist tools and activities to the creation of "constructionist cultures." These issues are explored through a specific example: MOOSE Crossing, a text-based virtual world (or "MUD") designed to be a constructionist learning environment for children ages 8 to 13. On MOOSE Crossing, children have constructed a virtual world together, making new places, objects, and creatures. Kids have made baby penguins that respond differently to five kinds of food, fortune tellers who predict the future, and the place at the end of the rainbow--- answer a riddle, and you get the pot of gold. This thesis discusses the design principles underlying a new programming language (MOOSE) and client interface (MacMOOSE) designed to make it easier for children to learn to program on MOOSE Crossing. It presents a detailed analysis, using an ethnographic methodology, of children's activities and learning experiences on MOOSE Crossing, with special focus on seven children who participated in a weekly after-school program from October 1995 through February 1997. In its analysis of children's activities, this thesis explores the relationship between construction and community. It describes how the MOOSE Crossing children motivated and supported one another's learning experiences: community provided support for learning through design and...

MediaMOO is a text-based, networked, virtual reality environment designed to enhance professional community among media researchers. This paper analyzes experience with the system to date and highlights the value of Constructionist principles to virtual reality design. Virtual Professional Community Once or twice a year we stand with name badges sipping coffee in a corridor, exchange ideas over expense-accounted lunches, and maybe attend a few talks. Friendships are made and projects hatched. Then it's back home to file for expenses, perhaps write a trip report, and get back to "real work" and relative isolation. MediaMOO is a text-based, networked, virtual reality environment designed to extend the type of casual collaboration which occurs at conferences to a daily activity. 2 Visitors to a conference share not just a set of interests, but also a place and a set of activities. Interaction is generated as much by the latter two as the former: Person A: Can you tell me how to get to...

As military budgets shrink, the Department of Defense (DoD) is turning to virtual worlds (VW) to solve problems and address issues that were previously solved by prototype or field exercises. However, there is a critical void of experience in the community on how to build VW systems. The Naval Postgraduate School’s Network Vehicle Simulator (NPSNET) was designed and built to address this need. NPSNET is a populated, networked, interactive, flexible, three dimensional (3D) virtual world system. This dissertation covers the construction and management of the VW in NPSNET. The system, which uses both standard and non-standard network message formats, is fully networked allowing multiple users to interact simultaneously in the VW. Commercial off the shelf (COTS), Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI) workstations, hardware was used exclusively in NPSNET to ensure the usefulness and the portability of the system to many DoD commands. The core software architecture presented here is suitable for any VW.

With the "WayMaker" software construction kit, users can design layouts for virtual spaces. These layouts are arrangments of structural elements described by Kevin Lynch in his book, The Image of the City. WayMaker tranforms arrangements of districts, paths, edges, nodes, and landmarks into street scenes. The initial prototype fits roofs, facades, and other scene components into perspective views of pathways through an imaginary place, which resembles paintings by Cezanne. Our focus on the act of construction and on the use of Lynch elements as building blocks may suggest a model for users' extensions to graphical multiuser environments. Context In "The Lessons of Lucasfilms' `Habitat'," Morningstar and Farmer describe how the "inhabitants" of virtual environments need to feel comfortable in the domain, to the point of developing a sense of "ownership" (Benedikt, 1991). In MUD-like environments, people typically develop this sense by creating objects, characters, and rooms or other spaces, and adding them to the environment for others to enjoy (Curtis, 1992; Rheingold, 1993; Bruckman & Resnick, 1995; Mitchell, 1995; Turkle, 1995). This constructive component is the basis for considering such virtual domains potentially interesting as learning environments (Harel & Papert, 1991; Kafai & Resnick, 1996; Moshell & Hughes, 1996; Strohecker, in press). The work described here focuses on participants' development of the space itself. Our "WayMaker" construction kit enables people to create and/or extend representations of a virtual place. We use the metaphor of a village or city because it enables us to think of the space in both structural and social terms. Contribution WayMaker is based on Kevin Lynch's foundation work in the field of urban planning and design. He studied ...

Throughout the design cycle, visualization, whether a sketch scribbled on the back of a spare piece of paper or a fully detailed drawing, has been the mainstay of design: we need to see the product. One of the most important stages of the design cycle is the initial, or concept, stage and it is here that design variants occur in large numbers to be vetted quickly. At this initial stage the human element – the designer – is crucial to the success of the product. In this paper we describe an interactive environment for concept design which recognises the needs of the designer, not only to see the product and make rapid modifications, but also to monitor the progress of their design towards some preferred solution. This leads to the notion of a design parameter space, typically high-dimensional, which must also be visualized in addition to the product itself. Using a module developed for IRIS Explorer (TM) , design steering is presented as a navigation of this space in order to search for optimal designs, either manually or by local optimisation.

: This paper argues for a linguistic explanation of the nature of Virtual Communities. Virtual Communities develop and grow in electronic space, or `cyberspace'. Authors such as Benedikt Meyrowitz and Mitchell have theorised about the nature of electronic space whilst Lefebvre, Popper, Hakim Bey (aka Lamborn Wilson) and Kuhn have theorised more generally about the nature of space. Extending this tradition and the works of these authors, this paper presents a language based perspective on the nature of electronic spaces. Behaviour in cyberspace is based on and regulated by hardware, software tools and interfaces. A definition of electronic space cannot be given beyond its linguistic characteristics, which underlie and sustain it. The author believes that the more users and developers understand the relationship between language and cyberspace, the more they will be able to use specific metaphors for dwelling and inhabiting it. In particular, MUDs/MOOs and the Web are interesting places ...

WayMaker" is a tool enabling non-professionals to create digital layouts for large-scale graphical virtual environments. The design tool is based on "elements of the city image" as described by the urban planner, Kevin Lynch (1960). Ultimately, WayMaker should be situated within a virtual environment so that output from the tool is transformed as extensions to the virtual world. Here we describe an initial prototype that simulates a virtual domain through a series of composited frames. Our work with users informs continued development of the tool. We also plan usage studies conducted from a cognitive science perspective, examining issues of constructive learning and spatial cognition. This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of MERL - A Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory, of Cambridge, Massachusetts; an acknowledgment of the authors and individual contributions to the work; and all applicable portions of the copyright notice. Copying, reproduction, or republishing for any other purpose shall require a license with payment of fee to MERL - A Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory. All rights reserved. Copyright MERL - A Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory, 1998 201 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 2 Long ago the urban theorist Kevin Lynch pointed out the fundamental relationship between human cognition and urban form --- the importance of the learned mental maps that knowledgeable locals carry about inside their skulls. These mental maps, together with the landmarks and ed...

to be presented to us in a way which is not fragmented or disruptive of our current activities, for it to become a part of our cognitive space, and be remembered and integrated with the flow of our mental activities, we need to be able to map, directly or by analogy, some of the real-world architecture back into the computer display. We need to build a display environment, a tailored information landscape, which helps people construct a cognitive map to organize, sort, classify, remember, integrate, the variety of textual or visual information presented. In accomplishing this task, we have been inspired by the existing literature in the field of spatial orientation, from a cognitive psychology perspective, as well as the literature on mnemonics. Our work shows how our knowledge of space can be used not only to find our bearings in cyberspace, but also to memorize and organize information, using space as a memory device or technique. As "spacemakers" [Walser, 1990], we have therefore u

Embodiment and subjectivity are important research issues for collaborative virtual environments. We claim that the direction and distance of an embodiment are the most important indicators of the relation between a user and surrounding objects or other users.

this paper has been carried out by the MOCCA group (working group 2) of the European CO-TECH programme. CO-TECH is aimed at conducting basic research into CSCW and at establishing a Europe-wide CSCW community through a number of different working groups. 1. Introduction The label CSCW applies to a wide variety of applications including shared editors, audio/video-conferencing, computerised meeting rooms, group design tools, coauthoring systems, shared calendars, work-flow systems, voting tools, whiteboards and message-based conferencing. Many researchers have attempted to find a common underlying model which could be used to describe such applications and, ultimately, to construct a range of new ones [WINOGRAD 86, BOWERS 88, PANKOKE 89, BIGNOLI 91, KREIFELTS 92]. These models frequently provide a notation or language for "configuring" applications which can be interpreted by a general purpose underlying CSCW system. The goal of a CSCW system which supports a wide variety of cooperative uses is a worthy one. However, the idea that all CSCW applications can be built to a common model may prove to be impractical. CSCW applications provide diverse models and mechanisms aimed at supporting either a particular cooperative activity or a class of activities. It is likely that this multiplicity of approaches will persist and that users will exploit a range of different applications. Unfortunately cooperative applications are often unaware of the existence of other applications and provide few mechanisms for working in conjunction with other applications. This observation provides the motivation for the work presented in this paper. The goal is to make it possible to run many CSCW applications in an integrated way. However, instead of looking for a monolithic solution to CSCW, we...