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AgentSheets

AgentSheets - Wikipedia
AgentSheets - Wikipedia

AgentSheets was one of the first modern block-based programming language for children. The idea of AgentSheets was to overcome syntactic challenges found in common text-based programming languages by using drag-and-drop mechanisms conceptualizing commands such as conditions and actions as editable blocks that could be composed into programs. Ideas such as this are used in various other programming languages, such as Scratch though it does cost money to use most of the blocks. AgentSheets is used to create media-rich projects such as games and interactive simulations. The main building blocks of AgentSheets are agents which are interactive objects programmed through rules. Using conditions agents can sense the user input including mouse, keyboard and in some versions even speech recognition and web page content. Using actions agents can move, produce sounds, open web pages, and compute formulas. AgentSheets was initially considered as a cyberlearning tool to teach students programming and related information technology skills through game design. AgentSheets is supported by a middle and high school curriculum called Scalable Game Design aligned with the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards (NETS). The mission of this project is to reinvent computer science in public schools by motivating & educating all students (including women and underrepresented communities) to learn about computer science through game design starting at the middle school level. Through this curriculum students build increasingly sophisticated games and, as part of this process, learn about computational concepts at the level of computational thinking that are relevant to game design as well as to computational science. The curriculum is made available through the Scalable Game Design Wiki. Research investigating motivational aspects of computer science education in public schools is currently exploring the introduction of game design in representative regions of the U.S. including technology hubs, inner city, rural and remote/tribal areas.

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Related concepts (4)
Scratch (programming language)
Scratch is a high-level block-based visual programming language and website aimed primarily at children as an educational tool, with a target audience of ages 8 to 16. Users on the site, called Scratchers, can create projects on the website using a block-like interface. Projects can be exported to standalone HTML5, Android apps, Bundle (macOS) and EXE files using external tools. Scratch was conceived and designed through collaborative National Science Foundation grants awarded to Mitchell Resnick and Yasmin Kafai.
Squeak
Squeak is an object-oriented, class-based, and reflective programming language. It was derived from Smalltalk-80 by a group that included some of Smalltalk-80's original developers, initially at Apple Computer, then at Walt Disney Imagineering, where it was intended for use in internal Disney projects. The group would later go on to be supported by HP labs, SAP, and most recently, Y Combinator. Squeak runs on a virtual machine (VM), allowing for a high degree of portability.
Etoys (programming language)
Etoys is a child-friendly computer environment and object-oriented prototype-based programming language for use in education. Etoys is a media-rich authoring environment with a scripted object model for many different objects that runs on different platforms and is free and open source. Squeak was originally developed at Apple in 1996 by Dan Ingalls. Squeak is a Smalltalk implementation, object-oriented, class-based, and reflective, derived from Smalltalk-80 at Apple Computer.
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