CHI 2009 ~ Panels April 4-9, 2009 ~ Boston, MA, USA

Growing Up Programming: Democratizing

the Creation of Dynamic, Interactive Media
Mitchel Resnick Yoshiki Ohshima Abstract
MIT Media Lab Viewpoints Research Institute Young people interact with games, animations, and
20 Ames Street 1209 Grand Central Ave. simulations all of the time. But few of them are able to
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA Glendale, CA 91201 USA create interactive media. The obstacle: traditional
mres@media.mit.edu yoshiki@vpri.org programming languages are too difficult to learn and
understand. This panel brings together a group of
Mary Flanagan Ken Perlin researchers, developers, and educators who are aiming
Tiltfactor, Dartmouth College Media Research Lab, NYU to democratize the activity of programming. They are
304 North Fairbanks 719 Broadway, Room 1202 developing a new generation of programming
Hanover, NH 03755 USA New York, NY 10003 USA environments that enable children and teens to create
mary@maryflanagan.com perlin@nyu.edu their own interactive games, stories, animations, and
simulations. Panelists will discuss and critique their
Caitlin Kelleher Robert Torres programming environments, then set up interactive
Washington University New York University demonstration stations for focused exploration and
1 Brookings Dr. 354 West 37th Street, Suite 3 small-group discussion. Audience members will also
St Louis, MO 63130 USA New York, NY 10018 have the opportunity to download the environments
ckelleher@cse.wustl.edu robert@designbydesign.org onto their own laptops, so that they can experiment in
greater depth.
Matthew MacLaurin
Microsoft Research Keywords
One Microsoft Way children, education, end-user programming, learning,
Redmond, WA 98052 USA literacy
mattmac@microsoft.com
ACM Classification Keywords
K.3.2 [Computers and Education]: Computer and
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). Information Science Education; D.1.7 [Programming
CHI 2009, April 4–9, 2009, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Techniques]: Visual Programming.
ACM 978-1-60558-247-4/09/04.

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CHI 2009 ~ Panels April 4-9, 2009 ~ Boston, MA, USA

Introduction Panelists will discuss the ideas underlying their

Today’s world is full of interactive objects. Walk up to a programming environments, show sample projects, and
door, and it opens automatically. Play with a toy, and it analyze what young people learn as they program
flashes, beeps, and talks in response to your actions. within these environments. After the opening
Connect to a website, and animations react to the presentations, panelists will set up demonstration
movements of your mouse. Log into an online game, stations around the room, providing audience members
and you can interact with fantasy creatures and other an opportunity to interact with the environments, see
virtual objects. Boot up a science simulation, and you more detailed demonstrations and examples, and
can explore the behavior of a bird flock or motions of engage in small-group discussions with the creators of
the planets. the environments. Audience members will also have the
opportunity to download the environments onto their
Young people interact with these objects everyday. But own laptops, so that they can explore and experiment
very few of them can create these objects. The creation in greater depth. In the final portion of the session, the
of interactive objects requires the ability to program, panelists will reassemble on the stage to answer
but traditional programming languages are notoriously questions and discuss future directions
difficult to learn and understand. As a result, most
young people are not fully fluent with digital media – Why Programming?
they can “read” but not “write.” While Web 2.0 has In its report Being Fluent with Information Technology,
opened up opportunities for everyone to create and the National Research Council (NRC) defined digital
express themselves with text, audio, and video, only a fluency as “the ability to reformulate knowledge, to
small subset of the population can create and express express oneself creatively and appropriately, and to
themselves with interactive media. produce and generate information (rather than simply
to comprehend it)…[Fluency] goes beyond traditional
This panel brings together a group of researchers, notions of computer literacy…[It] requires a deeper,
developers, and educators who are aiming to more essential understanding and mastery of
democratize the activity of programming. They are information technology for information processing,
developing a new generation of programming communication, and problem solving than does
environments that enable children and teens to create computer literacy as traditionally defined.”
their own interactive games, stories, animations, and
simulations. The goal is to transform programming According to the NRC report, skills associated with
from a specialized activity for a small sub-community of programming play a “central role” in the development
experts to an everyday activity for a diverse range of of fluency. The ability to program offers many
participants, so that everyone has an opportunity to important benefits:
become a fully fluent contributor to today’s digital
society.  It expands the range of what you can create with
software, so that you are no longer limited to the

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CHI 2009 ~ Panels April 4-9, 2009 ~ Boston, MA, USA

features provided by standard applications – become a pervasive presence in children’s lives, but
transforming your relationship with digital few children learn to program. Today, most people view
technology from “consumer” to “creator.” computer programming as a narrow, technical activity,
 It helps you develop a deeper understanding of appropriate only for a small segment of the population.
how computers work, enabling you to use
computer applications more effectively and analyze What happened to the initial enthusiasm for introducing
them more critically. programming to children? Why did Logo and other
initiatives not live up to their promise? There were
 It offers a meaningful context for learning
many factors:
important mathematical concepts, including some
concepts that are already taught in pre-college
curricula (such as “variables”) and others that are  Early programming languages were too difficult to
typically seen as too advanced for pre-college use. Many children had difficulty mastering the
students (such as “feedback” and “emergence”). syntax of programming languages.

 It supports the development of “computational  Programming was often introduced with activities
thinking,” providing experience with important (generating lists of prime numbers, or making
problem-solving and design strategies (such as simple line drawings) that were not connected to
modularization and iterative design) that carry over children’s interests or experiences.
to non-programming domains. By providing an  Children did not have access to a “literature” of
external representation of your problem-solving interesting computer programs. Whereas young
processes, it also offers opportunities to reflect on writers are often inspired by reading great works of
your own thinking – and to think about thinking literature, there was no analogous literature of
itself. programming projects to inspire new programmers.
 Programming was often introduced in contexts
Previous Research
where no one had the expertise needed to provide
When personal computers were first introduced in the
guidance when things went wrong – or encourage
late 1970s and 1980s, there was initial enthusiasm for
deeper explorations when things went right.
teaching all children how to program. Thousands of
schools taught millions of students to write simple
Featured Projects
programs in the Logo or Basic programming languages.
The panel will feature six programming environments,
Seymour Papert’s book Mindstorms presented Logo as
each designed to make the activity of programming
a cornerstone for rethinking approaches to education
more intuitive and the core concepts of programming
and learning. Although some children and teachers
more understandable. The projects overcome
were energized and transformed by these new
limitations of earlier initiatives by building upon recent
possibilities, most schools soon shifted to other uses of
HCI research in the areas of end-user programming,
computers. In the past 20 years, computers have
graphical interface design, collaborative learning, and

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CHI 2009 ~ Panels April 4-9, 2009 ~ Boston, MA, USA

interaction design for children. The panelists are all Gamestar Mechanic is an
RPG
(Role‐Playing
Game)

core members of the design teams for their respective style
online
game
where
middle
and
high
school‐age

projects. players
learn
the
fundamentals
of
game
design
by
playing

roles
as
“game
mechanics”
charged
with
the
making
and

Alice 2 and Storytelling Alice are designed to enable “modding”
(modifying)
of
games.

The
game’s
online
social

novice programmers to learn basic programming networking
feature
allows
player‐designers
to
play
and

constructs while creating their own 3D animations and comment
on
each
other’s
games.

Gamestar Mechanic
is
a

games. Alice 2 targets college and high school students collaborative
research
and
development
project
between

learning computer programming in a formal classroom Gamelab,
a
game
company
in
New
York,
and
the
Games,

setting. Storytelling Alice is designed for middle school Learning,
and
Society
Program
at
the
University
of

students, particularly girls. (Caitlin Kelleher) Wisconsin,
Madison. (Robert Torres)

Kodu is an exploratory programming environment RAPUNSEL is the name of the research project that
situated within a modern, high-quality 3D video game developed the PEEPS game for "real-time, applied
running on either a PC or an XBox 360 game console. programming for underrepresented students' early
In Kodu, kids can interactively edit the world, place literacy (RAPUNSEL)." The team's design goal was to
characters, and give those characters autonomous develop an entertaining venue for programming
behaviors using a purpose-built iconic programming education among middle school girls in informal
language. Typing is optional: all programming is done settings. Our goal of addressing girls in particular
with a standard game controller. (Matthew MacLaurin) through the design is related to gender equity and the
digital divide. (Mary Flanagan and Ken Perlin)
Etoys (http://squeakland.org) is an interactive
multimedia authoring tool designed for children (around Scratch enables young people (ages 8 and up) to
5th-6th graders) which draws upon the ideas of Logo, create their own interactive stories, games, and
Smalltalk, Hypercard, and StarLogo. Built on top of the animations – and share their creations on the web.
Squeak programming language, Etoys pioneered a tile- Scratch is designed to make programming more
scripting interface in which a user can drag and drop tinkerable, more meaningful, and more social. Since
graphical tiles to construct "scripts" for the multimedia Scratch was launched in May 2007, more than 300,000
objects. The creators of Etoys envisioned the use of projects have been shared on the Scratch website
computers in mathematics, science, and computing (http://scratch.mit.edu), which has been called “the
education. Etoys offers features that make it easy to YouTube of interactive media.” As young people create
describe the discrete form of differential equations, and and share Scratch projects, they learn to think
support materials for Etoys demonstrate how to model creatively, reason systematically, and work
physical phenomenon in Etoys. (Yoshiki Ohshima) collaboratively. (Mitchel Resnick)

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