Since the early 1960’s, researchers have built a number of programming languages and environments with the intention of making programming accessible to a larger number of people. This article presents a taxonomy of languages and environments designed to make programming more accessible to novice programmers of all ages. The systems are organized by their primary goal, either to teach programming or to use programming to empower their users, and then, by each system’s authors ’ approach, to making learning to program easier for novice programmers. The article explains all categories in the taxonomy, provides a brief description of the systems in each category, and suggests some avenues for future work in novice programming environments and languages.

Scratch is a networked, media-rich programming environment designed to enhance the development of technological fluency at after-school centers in economically-disadvantaged communities. Just as the LEGO MindStorms robotics kit added programmability to an activity deeply rooted in youth culture (building with LEGO bricks), Scratch adds programmability to the media-rich and network-based activities that are most popular among youth at afterschool computer centers. Taking advantage of the extraordinary processing power of current computers, Scratch supports new programming paradigms and activities that were previously infeasible, making it better positioned to succeed than previous attempts to introduce programming to youth. Our working hypothesis is that, as kids work on personally meaningful Scratch projects such as animated stories, games, and interactive art, they will develop technological fluency, mathematical and problem solving skills, and a justifiable selfconfidence that will serve them well in the wider spheres of their lives. 1.

We describe Storytelling Alice, a programming environment that introduces middle school girls to computer programming as a means to the end of creating 3D animated stories. Storytelling Alice supports story creation by providing 1) a set of high-level animations, that support the use of social characters who can interact with one another, 2) a collection of 3D characters and scenery designed to spark story ideas, and 3) a tutorial that introduces users to writing Alice programs using storybased examples. In a study comparing girls ’ experiences learning to program using Storytelling Alice and a version of Alice without storytelling support (Generic Alice), we found that users of Storytelling Alice and Generic Alice were equally successful at learning basic programming constructs. Participants found Storytelling Alice and Generic Alice equally easy to use and entertaining. Users of Storytelling Alice were more motivated to program; they spent 42 % more time programming, were more than 3 times as likely to sneak extra time to work on their programs, and expressed stronger interest in future use of Alice than users

This paper describes Scratch, a visual, block-based programming language designed to facilitate media manipulation for novice programmers. We report on the Scratch programming experiences of urban youth ages 8-18 at a Computer Clubhouse—an after school center—over an 18-month period. Our analyses of 536 Scratch projects collected during this time documents the learning of key programming concepts even in the absence of instructional interventions or experienced mentors. We discuss the motivations of urban youth who choose to program in Scratch rather than using one of the many other software packages available to them and the implications for introducing programming at after school settings in underserved communities.

This paper describes the design and early evaluation of the Tangicam, or tangible camera, a mobile device for children to capture and edit realistic pictures and videos. Our first experimental results show that the affordances of the Tangicam allow imitation learning and free playing in a context of tangible and augmented reality. Our goal is to create a simple and robust observation system that lets children produce narratives based on situated [51] video, audio and sensor data. We also want to explore how these temporal structures may allow children to describe themselves, other children or natural phenomena and how such situated time series may help develop new forms of synaesthetic and intersubjective constructions.

Abstract. When teaching concurrency, using a process-oriented language, it is often introduced through a visual representation of programs in the form of process network diagrams. These diagrams allow the design of and abstract reasoning about programs, consisting of concurrently executing communicating processes, without needing any syntactic knowledge of the eventual implementation language. Process network diagrams are usually drawn on paper or with general-purpose diagramming software, meaning the program must be implemented as syntactically correct program code before it can be run. This paper presents POPed, an introductory parallel programming tool leveraging process network diagrams as a visual language for the creation of process-oriented programs. Using only visual layout and connection of pre-created components, the user can explore process orientation without knowledge of the underlying programming language, enabling a “processes first ” approach to parallel programming. POPed has been targeted specifically at basic robotic control, to provide a context in which introductory parallel programming can be naturally motivated.

a survey of programming environments and languages for novice programmers

Computation is a powerful way of knowing and exploring the world that finds its application in a broad range of human activities, from art making to mathematical modeling. Historically, this way of knowing has been taught in a canonical, top-down abstract fashion. This thesis presents a critical historical analysis of computers and computation in order to arrive at a framework for design of spaces for introducing computational concepts. Existing work is revisited before presenting a new system called CTRL_SPACE, specifically built to as an alternate method of conveying computational concepts to young children ages four to seven.

Abstract. This paper reports on a programming lesson using autonomous robots in junior high school. First, the design of the low cost circuit board for the lesson is described. The structure of a general programming language “Dolittle ” which controls a robot is also explained. Then, we introduce lessons of manufacturing and controlling robots in “Information and Computer ” area of “Technology and Home Economics” subject for students (from 14 to 15 years old). From the result of the lessons we found that (1) learning programming is “hard fun ” for students and (2) robot programming is effective for students those who have difficulties in learning. We propose introduction of learning programming with autonomous robots to IT education of junior high school. 1

Alice2 is a programming environment designed for teaching programming through building 3D virtual worlds. Based on feedback from user tests, we have created a drag and drop programming system that allows users to experiment with the logic and programming structures taught in introductory programming classes without making syntax errors. While similar programming environments for beginners allow users to experiment with only a few programming concepts, Alice2 allows users to experiment with conditionals, count loops, while loops, variables, parameters, and procedures.