AnimMagix: Learning about Emergent Effects of Behavioral Attributes
AnimMagix is one of a series of prototype environments in which learners experiment with part-whole relationships by composing objects and observing effects that emerge when the objects combine in a larger context. Such experimentation can support development of scientific understandings in the domain of multivariate systems. Users construct creatures by adjusting three behavioral attributes: perceptivity, sociability, and motility. Interactions among these attributes affect the creatures' movements as they "dance" together.
Background & Objective: Color, animation, dynamic modeling, and interactivity are capabilities of current computational media that help in making tools for learning. Researchers take different approaches to the design, implementation, and evaluation of computational learning environments. MERL's approach follows a "learn by doing" philosophy. Like Dewey, Piaget, and Papert, we believe that learners construct their own knowledge, rather than merely absorbing what others present to them. We observe that learning happens particularly well when the learner is making something personally meaningful, which others can appreciate.
Technical Discussion: The main significance of the Magix series is in its interaction design. We model interactions as a conversation between the learner and the software toy. In AnimMagix, each of these partners has a specific role in the construction of behaving creatures and groups, which are the parts and wholes of the sociodynamic microworld. The balance of control plays out as working areas on the screen shrink and grow while affording the learner different tools and possibilities for interaction. The learner endows creatures with basic drives and sensorimotor capabilities, and AnimMagix incorporates creatures within the larger context of an interacting social group. The learner can save creatures for play in other modes. AnimMagix includes modes for modifying creatures' drives and behaviors directly or through adjustments to conditions of the environment. Creatures' interactions are displayed within activation areas modeled on Cartesian coordinates. A creature's user-assigned motility pattern and program-assigned value for effecting changes of location determine where the creature's perceptual cone lies and thus what other creatures it can influence. For each time beat, a creature checks the area within the depth and angled breadth of its cone, to see if any other creatures are present in that area. If the creature (creature A) determines that another creature (creature B) lies within A's perceptual cone, A uses its sociability attribute as the basis for changes to the (x,y) values that establish B's location. A can draw B toward it or send B away. These simple principles yield increasingly complex dynamics as the user adds creatures to the field.
Contact: Joseph Katz
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| The Magix Series of Playful Learning Environments | |
Technology Areas:
Graphics
Artificial Intelligence
Modification Date: September 12, 2007