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CONSTRUIT!
• Meurig Beynon
• Jonny Foss
• Elizabeth Hudnott
• Steve Russ
• Chris Hall
… and the other members of the CONSTRUIT! team
construit.org
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Key concerns
• Supporting constructionism – learners as
teachers and developers
• Enabling adaptation of open educational
resources by teachers and learners
• Blurring the distinction between players and
developers in computer games (“mods”)
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Construal/Program
A program has an abstract functionality …
… a construal offers interactive experience
A program has a formal semantics …
… a construal expresses informal meanings
The meaning is in the connection with the world
cf. the examinations spreadsheet …
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Semantics
Lucy
Fred
Bret
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5
7
7
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Art RE PE Ave
7.0
5.3
6.0
• Cell as MARK • Column as SUBJECT
‘dependencies’ ‘observables’
Who can change what, when?
Known/expected effects
Fluent connection
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Observables
Student identities Marks in subjects Average for student
Spreadsheet Row Spreadsheet Column Spreadsheet Cell
Counterparts of observables ‘making a connection in experience’
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Constitution …
• observables: entities to which we can attribute an identity and a current value
• dependencies amongst observables: changing the value of one observable in one and the same action changes the value of another
• the agency that acts upon them: human or machine actions deemed to be responsible for changing the values of observables
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Shopping examples
Observables and dependencies
the items for sale, the items selected for purchase, the coins being offered and the coins that remain in the purse … visually represented on the canvas
the total cost of the items in the basket, and how much money has been offered … defined by dependency, no visual counterparts
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Shopping examples
Agents and agency
customer can select coins and select items
teacher can change prices or purse content
automated oracle can generate random coins
maker can introduce and refine definitions:
× haveenoughmoney is totalcost < spendingmoney; ×
Every agent action is (re)definition of observables
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Dissolve interfaces
Redefinition via Input Window for all in principle
… but can craft an interface for learner in canvas
Teacher can identify and correct simple errors
haveenoughmoney is totalcost <= spendingmoney;
Supporting the maker role …
dissolving the ‘program interface’ and the interface to the programmer
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Exploit construals
To derive educational resources from construals:
• conceive the transformation of the existing observables
• identify the names of the relevant observables
• reconfigure the observables, definitions and agency
Live demonstration with Shopping construal at
jseden.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/construit
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A Shopping game
As derived from the basic Shopping construal by a process of conception, identification and reconfiguration intended to be accessible to a computing non-specialist
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More re construals
How do you think it works? ... and how we think IT works
For more info, contact Meurig Beynon: [email protected] and attend the CONSTRUIT! workshop tomorrow 11-12:
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Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to:
Tim Monks, Nick Pope, Ant Harfield, Joe Butler
for their work on developing JS-EDEN
Mike Joy as the Coordinator for CONSTRUIT!