The Scalable Game Design project is aimed at getting computer science into middle schools, to get kids interested in information technology through their natural interest in games. A principal software tool of the project is AgentSheets, which lets you make your own simulation games without learning the syntax of a programming language.
If you know a kid in middle school who wants to make his or her own game, or just learn about programming, I recommend that you take a look at this!
The general concept is a bit like some systems you may have seen before, such as the visual programming languages provided with Lego Mindstorms. However, this requires no special hardware, and the specifics look a lot more interesting and flexible to me than anything I’ve seen along these lines.
An example of what you can do is the classic arcade game Frogger (developed by Konami for Sega/Gremlin in 1981). This tutorial shows how to do it in AgentSheets.
There is a three-minute movie showing kids using AgentSheets. It gives a good sense of the kind of game and the level of complexity that AgentSheets is suitable for (although it doesn’t demonstrate programming itself).
You can also read research papers about the project.
To try it out, you can download a free trial version with a ten-day license, for MacOS X or Windows. It costs $120 in single units, less for educators or if you get ten licenses.
As it happens, it’s written in Common Lisp, which is how I came to hear about it. But that doesn’t matter as far as using it is concerned.
The principal investigator is Prof. Alexander Repenning of the University of Colorado. He has worked at Xerox PARC and HP, and he has collaborated with researchers at the Epistemology and Learning Group of the MIT Media Lab, LOGO, and SRI to explore programmable LOGO toys. He has been involved in many other projects as well.
Thanks for telling me about this, Alex!