During the early part of my PhD studies, my research focused on leveraging technology and especially social media for computer science education. I conceived of a socially-networked end-user programming environment that would allow users to program 3D avatars that they could then post on social media sites. I built a system, the 3D Avatar Programming System, that allowed for users to easily manipulate a 3D avatar within a web browser using a simple scripting language built on top of Javascript. The system used the o3d graphics plugin - and has now migrated to WebGL.
Presented at the University of Colorado CS Colloquium, Boulder, CO (April 14, 2011).
This was a talk I gave about distributed cognition and embodied learning within the 3DAPS system. The talk summarized results from a video-based analysis of non-programmers’ use of the platform during a 2009 user study. Leysia Palen and I used micro-ethnographic analytic methods to understand how learning about programming occurs. I discuss here how the management of internal and external cognitive representations of 3D movement information leverages existing, embodied knowledge to unravel less familiar knowledge—that of programmatic instruction. In other words, the 3D movement serves as the language of translation between the representations to support learning. I also examine how shared code is used as an educational resource in a learning environment without a teacher.
Publication:
Starbird, Kate and Leysia Palen. (2011). More Than the Usual Suspects: The Physical Self and Other Resources for Learning to Program Using a 3D Avatar Environment. Presented at the 2011 iConference, Seattle, WA.