AgentCubes facts for kids
rule based visual programming
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| Paradigm | object-oriented, educational, Conversational Programming |
|---|---|
| Designed by | Alexander Repenning |
| First appeared | 2006 |
| Stable release |
3.0 / 18 March 2020
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| Platform | HTML5 |
| License | proprietary |
| Influenced by | |
| AgentSheets, Lisp, Logo, Smalltalk | |
| Influenced | |
| Scratch | |
AgentCubes is a special computer program that helps kids like you create your own 3D and 2D online games and simulations. It's an educational programming language designed to teach you how to think like a computer scientist, a skill called computational thinking. You learn this by designing your own games and simulations.
Imagine a giant digital grid, like a spreadsheet, but in 3D! AgentCubes organizes everything in this grid, with rows, columns, and layers, even stacks of "agents." These agents are like tiny programmable characters or objects. This grid setup is great for making all sorts of projects, from old-school arcade games like Pac-Man to cool 3D adventures and simple agent-based models.
Agents can have custom 3D shapes you create. They can also do math, move around the grid, change how they look, play sounds, animate themselves, and even send messages to each other.
AgentCubes was created with help from the National Science Foundation. Researchers wanted to see if students in grades K-12 could learn computational thinking by designing games. They also wanted to know if these skills could help students later with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) projects.
How AgentCubes Started
AgentCubes was inspired by another program called AgentSheets, which was one of the first to use "drag and drop" blocks for programming back in 1995. A big change for AgentCubes was moving from 2D to 3D design. It even included an easy way to create 3D models called "Inflatable Icons."
Both AgentSheets and AgentCubes have roots in a very early computer program that ran on a huge supercomputer. This early program explored "parallel computing," which means many things happening at the same time. AgentCubes kept this idea of parallel computing, but you don't need a supercomputer to use it!
- AgentCubes Desktop (2006): The very first version of AgentCubes was a program you installed on your Mac or Windows computer.
- AgentCubes Online (2012): This version looks similar but was completely rebuilt for the internet. It uses web technologies like HTML5, JavaScript, and WebGL, so you can use it right in your web browser.
AgentCubes Online has been used in big projects supported by the National Science Foundation to train teachers across the U.S. It has also been used in other countries like Mexico and Switzerland. By 2017, over 1 million projects had been created using AgentCubes Online! It's now available in English, Spanish, German, Italian, and French.
Thinking Like a Computer
The main goal of AgentCubes is to help you become a "computational thinker," not just someone who writes code. It's a tool for thinking, not just for programming. This makes learning computer science practical for students by combining tools that help with programming and tools that help with creativity.
- Programming Help: AgentCubes doesn't just help you write code correctly. It also helps you understand what your programs mean and how to fix them when things go wrong. For example, it helps you study what your programs are doing in different situations.
- Creativity Tools: Research shows that students are more motivated to program when they can create their own designs. AgentCubes makes it easy to create 3D models. You can even 3D print the objects you design!
Programming in AgentCubes uses "IF/THEN" rules that work at the same time. You can put together lists of conditions (the "IF" part) and actions (the "THEN" part) to make a rule. These rules can be grouped into bigger blocks called "methods" that other rules can use.
Because it's designed for computational thinking, you can often make games and simulations with just a few rules. For example, you can create a complete Pac-Man-like game, including smart ghost characters that work together to find Pac-Man, using only about 10 rules! Other similar rule-based tools include ToonTalk and Microsoft's Kodu.
