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.

Interactive immersive entertainment, or videogame playing, has emerged as a major entertainment and educational medium. As research and development initiatives proliferate, educational researchers might benefit by developing more grounded theories about them. This article argues for framing game play as a designed experience. Players ’ understandings are developed through cycles of performance within the gameworlds, which instantiate particular theories of the world (ideological worlds). Players develop new identities both through game play and through the gaming communities in which these identities are enacted. Thus research that examines game-based learning needs to account for both kinds of interactions within the gameworld and in broader social contexts. Examples from curriculum developed for Civilization III and Supercharged! show how games can communicate powerful ideas and open new identity trajectories for learners.

The task of specializing programming environments for novices begins with the recognition that programming is a hard skill to learn. The lack of student programming skill even after a year of undergraduate studies in computer science was noted and measured in the early 80’s [32] and again in this decade [20]. We know that students have problems with looping constructs [31], conditionals [8], and assembling programs out of base components [33]—and there are probably other factors, and interactions between these factors, too. What are the critical pieces? What pieces, if we “fixed ” them (made them better for novice programmers), would make programming into a more manageable, learnable skill? If we developed a language that changed how conditionals work or loops, or make it easier to integrate components, would programming become easier? That’s the issue that developers of educational programming environments are asking. Each novice programming environment (or family of environments) is attempting to answer the question, “What makes programming hard? ” Each answer to that question implies a family of environments that address the concern with a set of

Abstract: Whereas sophisticated computer users can exercise more control in what they are exposed to and produce computational artifacts, technologically challenged end-users assume a more passive role in the information society. In order to construct such artifacts, typically some programming knowledge is necessary. Although learning how to program is not impossible for these end-users, it is usually quite difficult and uninteresting. This paper describes Programmorphosis, a multi-layered approach to end-user programming, which, at the highest level, enables novice end-user programmers to define behaviors of interacting agents in a high-level abstract language. Behavior templates are used to structure domain concepts in declarative knowledge bases. Specifying behaviors is achieved by altering behavioral parameters in a wizard environment that subsequently generates lower-level executable code using information in procedural knowledge bases. With Programmorphosis, the programming process transforms into modification and customization of reusable templates and therefore becomes more manageable for novice end-user programmers.

Evolution in scientific software is often according to a specific pattern of software changes: professional scientists, who are not professional software developers, need rapid, dynamic, and domain-specific changes of the software they work with. To address unanticipated software evolution in this field, our objective is to enable these end-users (here: biologists) to change software from the user interface. An approach is presented that integrates technological and methodological solutions. We explain why these solutions are complementary, and how they can be integrated and co-evolved from software design to actual use. 1

– programming of social agents by children

End-user development has enormous potential to make computers more useful in a large variety of contexts by providing people without any formal programming training increased control over information processing tasks. This variety of contexts poses a challenge to end-user development system designers. No individual system can hope to address all of these challenges. The field of enduser development is likely to produce a plethora of systems fitting specific needs of computer end-users. The goal of this chapter is not to advocate a kind of universal end-user development system, but to cut across a variety of application domains based on our experience with the AgentSheets end-user simulation-authoring tool. We have pioneered a number of programming paradigms, experienced a slew of challenges originating in different user communities, and evolved end-user development mechanisms over several years. In this chapter we present design guidelines that cut across this vast design space by conceptualizing the process of end-user development as a learning experience. Fundamentally, we claim that every end-user development system should attempt to keep the learning challenges in proportion to the skills end-users have. By adopting this perspective, end-user development can actively scaffold a process during which end-users pick up new end-user development tools and gradually learn about new functionality. We structure these design guidelines in accordance to their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic nature of support offered to end-users.

We describe participatory programming as a process that spans design, programming, use and tailoring of software. This process, that includes end-users at each stage, integrates participatory design and programmability. Programmability, as a property that relies on a reflective architecture, aims to let the end-users evolve the tools themselves according to their current, specific needs and to let them control better the way results are computed. We present an environment that results from this approach, called biok, developed for researchers in biology, which is both domain-oriented and open to full programming.

In recent years, educational technologists and designers have begun to explore a variety of ways in which physical and computational media can be integrated—for instance, through the design of “intelligent toys ” for children. This paper describes our ongoing efforts at exploring a different sort of physical-computational integration, focusing on children’s design activities, output devices, and the notion of “printing out ” more generally. We describe several representative systems under development in our group; each of these systems highlights particular possibilities for exploring and experimenting with output devices for children’s crafts. We also present a set of design heuristics—useful techniques for those educational designers interested in expanding the range and expressiveness of craft activities for children.

Accepted for publication in Communications of the ACM (CACM)