Teachers as simulation programmers: minimalist learning and reuse
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Rethinking children's programming with contextual signs
Proceedings of the 2006 conference on Interaction design and children
Collaborative use & design of interactive simulations
CSCL '99 Proceedings of the 1999 conference on Computer support for collaborative learning
Visual programming with analogical representations: Inspirations from a semiotic analysis of comics
Journal of Visual Languages and Computing
Mulspren: a multiple language programming environment for children
CHINZ '03 Proceedings of the 4th Annual Conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction
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Designing programming languages that are accessible to elementary school children is a complex task. Programming languages that contain visual elements provide a good starting point, because they are inherently appealing to many children. As novice users, however, children require additional support to use programming languages effectively. In this paper, we describe five principles for designing end-user programming languages which address some of the obstacles we have observed when students attempt to create sophisticated programs. The principles are based on extensions we have made to Visual AgentTalk, the tactile programming component of the Agentsheets system. Although our research has centered on children, we believe that the discussion may be widely applicable to languages for novice users of any age.