Concept
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.
