Kinesthetic Computer Science activities in a virtual world

Kinesthetic activities are analogical mediators (Bianco and Tinazzi) that enable students to experience an idea through physical activity.

The first photograph below shows such an activity from Computer Science Unplugged (csunplugged.org), where students follow a parallel sorting network marked on the pavement with chalk, so sort 6 numbers into order. The sorting network activity involves comparing numbers with people who are encountered in the process of moving through the network marked on the ground. The students choose their path based on a simple rule, and come out

the other end with their numbers sorted into order. In the process they have encountered concepts like comparison, ordering, and especially parallel processing. This activity has been used in many contexts, and in invariably engaging for students.

However, not all students are able to participate in physically active challenges (Marghitu, et

al.); in some cases they may have mobility impairment, others may have personality problems that make it difficult for them to interact with others, while others simply may not be able to find enough peers to make up a team and try the activity.

We are exploring the potential of providing such activities in a Virtual world, in this case,

Second Life, a virtual environment in which individuals interact on-line through avatars in a virtual 3D space.

tim.bell@canterbury.ac.nz

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Tim Bell

University of Canterbury Christchurch, New Zealand

A key attraction of teaching kinesthetic activities in a virtual world is that students need only be able to interact with a pointing device to “move” around in the virtual environment, making the activities accessible to those

with limited mobility. It may also be suitable for students who are isolated for social or personal reasons.

It removes barriers found in the real world, allowing the development of imaginative environments, the use of virtual actors from a fictional story, and

the ability to create visual and aural fantasies that will engage children’s imagination. Students themselves can contribute creative ideas. For example, in our virtual sorting network, one group of students decided to ride through the network on cubes that had been provided as a demonstration – it was the students that thought of riding on them.

(In the prototype, the cubes were travelling too fast for them to see what was happening, so a speed control would be useful!)

Many of the kinesthetic activities in CS were developed for outreach, to encourage students to consider further study in CS. Using activities in a

virtual world raises the possibility of engaging students who are interested in on-line interaction, and thus to expose them to Computer Science rather than just being computer users. In this case they will be finding out what CS is by playing games within existing technology.

A virtual world provides the opportunity to interact with others from around the world, which can make it possible to find enough people to “play” with regardless of the time of day.

The level of challenge in a virtual world can be adapted to the students’ ability

on the fly, providing “flow” in the game (Csíkszentmihályi, 1990).

Hickey-Moody and Wood (2008) discuss the use of virtual worlds for students with disabilities, and point at that while they may be excellent for some people with disabilities, they can be partially or fully inaccessible to other people

with disabilities. For example, Second Life is very visual, and is potentially less accessible to visually impaired or color blind students than the real world. However, work is being done on such issues (e.g. White et al. 2008), and virtual worlds do have more potential for alternative representations than the real world. In fact, there can be four

different forms of “mediation” of the real world: active, iconic, analogical and symbolic. Presentation should also take into account a range of disabilities; for example, alternative text and text caption will be useful for students with hearing and some cognitive disabilities – see Web Content Accessibility

Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 at http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/.

Teaching in virtual worlds

Kinesthetic activities

Lessons learned

A parallel sorting network was implemented in Second Life.

CS in a virtual world

Some initial experience has been gained developing and using the sorting network in Second Life. Some of the issues we have noted are:

The main area of Second Life is restricted to people 18 and over, and there is another area for teenagers (13 to 17 years old). This makes it impossible for younger students to access the main area, and there are severe restrictions on teachers accessing the teen area. For proper evaluations with students we will use a local system such as OpenSimulator.

A group of Japanese students (average age about 25 years old) trialed the system; one student was deaf, and the others had upper and lower limb mobility problems, including 4 who used a wheelchair. Some had difficulties learning Second Life (and noted the difficulty of having to put a t-shirt on), but most adapted to it quickly and would like to have spent more time there. One

noted that it worked a lot better on a more powerful computer, and another noted that the primary language of the environment was English, which created a new barrier for second-language students.

Most of the students enjoyed the experience and would like to use it more. Although one student preferred the “real world” and found the virtual

environment “lonely”, others enjoyed the interaction in the virtual environment, and one preferred interactions in SL to the real world. One appreciated that it used less space. Another found that they preferred the SL environment “far and away” compared with the physical world, although also noted that while the environment was fun, personal interactions in the real

world are more meaningful. The deaf student enjoyed using the text chat. For completely new members of Second Life, there would have been benefit in

having some very simple exercises to build confidence in simple matters like talking to each other, and moving around, before engaging in a challenging Computer Science based activity. On the other hand, it may turn

out that such activities provide a good medium for developing this confidence. In the initial design, participants acquire a numbered t-shirt, but to put it on they

must first take off their top, which is culturally unusual and also requires in-world skills not directly related to doing the activity. In future versions we would use a simpler approach, such as wearing a vest or hat.

Because participants are in different locations in the real world, it is possible that they have local distractions such as visitors, phone calls, or email. This is not too unlike a real-world situation, where members of a class may become distracted talking to each other! However, it can mean that people miss important instructions, and it may not be so obvious that they were

distracted. Because our project spans 4 countries, it was impossible to find a time that all

members could meet during reasonable hours. Although most pairs of countries could find convenient meeting times, international meetings may be difficult given that school students would be constrained by class timetables in

addition to limited windows of common working times.

References Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row

Bianco, G.M. and Tinazzi, S. One step further the ACM K-12 final report: a proposal for level 1: computer

organization for K-8. ITiCSE '06: Proceedings of the 11th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and

Technology in Computer Science Education, Bologna (Italy), June 2006.

Marghitu, D., Kulkarni, S., Zylla_Jones, E. Auburn University Computer Literacy Academy for Children (dealing

with disabilities), SIGCSE 2008, Portland Oregon, March 12-15, 2008

Hickey-Moody, A. and Wood, D. Imagining otherwise: Deleuze, disability & Second Life. ANZCA08 Conference,

Power and Place. Wellington, July 2008

White, G. R., Fitzpatrick, G., and McAllister, G. 2008. Toward accessible 3D virtual environments for the blind and

visually impaired. In Proceedings of the 3rd international Conference on Digital interactive Media in

Entertainment and Arts (Athens, Greece, September 10 - 12, 2008). DIMEA '08, vol. 349. ACM, New York, NY,

134-141.

Daniela Marghitu

Auburn University Alabama, USA

Mick Grimley

University of Canterbury Christchurch, New Zealand

Hiroki Manabe

Kanagawa Vocational Training School for Persons with Disabilities

Japan

Giovanni Bianco

University of Verona Italy

Unplugged? In a virtual world?!

Porting “Unplugged” activities to a Virtual World may seem to be the antithesis of what the off-line “Unplugged” project is about, but we are simply acknowledging that for some students a virtual world is a form of reality that works better for them,

and for some it can offer the ability to participate in ways that simply aren’t possible in a physical environment.

A sorting network in the physical world for

mobility impaired students

A sorting network in Second Life

A sorting network in the physical world

A student participating in a

sorting network in Second

Life, despite not being able

to walk in real life

Choosing t-shirts

before doing the

sorting

Ideas for other activities to implement include:

•!The CS Unplugged Parity “magic trick”, where the parity cards

could be done by placing colored mats on the ground instead of on a board. Students would try to find a flipped mat using a 2-dimensional parity error check. This could also be played as a game either racing against the clock, or against an opponent.

•!Activities that involve walking around could have more elaborate guides than just markings on the pavement. For example, the “Treasure Hunt”, which uses imaginary ships and islands that students walk around, could be implemented using virtual ships taking avatars between small “islands”, or it might use trains and

tracks to implement the constraints required to demonstrate a finite state machine, or passages in a maze. It is limited only by imagination.

In the screenshot above, six individuals are about to use the sorting network in Second Life. The people interacting are in two

New Zealand cities, and one is in China. They start on the green squares in a random order. (The “sort” button can be pressed to see a demonstration of the sorting.)

If they have followed the instructions correctly, at the end of the

network they come out with their numbers in sorted order.