Netsblox

A modular, open-access curriculum created at Vanderbilt that’s designed to expand the ability of high school teachers to use technology in learning offers an engaging introduction to advanced topics that are currently accessible only to computer science majors in college. Programming for a Networked World is a beginner-level MOOC… Read More

In thinking about developing an app for NetsBlox, a block-based programming language that introduces coding to young learners, Devin Cruz Jean asked himself a simple question: Would he, as a middle school or early high school student, be interested in the data sets NetsBlox could access? The answer was no. Read More

Cybersecurity campers program their robots to push empty boxes toward a finish line. Anastasia likes computer science so her mother told her about Vanderbilt’s cybersecurity summer camp. Kimmi and Quinn have a high school friend who was a cybersecurity camper last year.  Tanuj, a veteran of Python and Java camps,… Read More

In this tug-of-war game there was no rope and no pulling. Groans, however, were plentiful as pairs of middle and high school campers at Vanderbilt jabbed at computer keys and space bars to push left or right a small robot car with cartoon googly eyes. One person in each pair… Read More

Professor Akos Ledeczi and Ph.D. student Brian Broll work with their NetsBlox intuitive visual programming platform. (Vanderbilt University) Vanderbilt University Professor of Computer Engineering Akos Ledeczi doesn’t want everyone to become a programmer. But understanding how computers think, interact, and do what we want them to do – those are 21st century skills, he said. In NetsBlox, a visual programming environment, Ledeczi and an interdisciplinary team are developing a teaching tool that introduces the basics and a high-level view of distributed computing. The team has worked with students as young as middle schoolers and has several upcoming camps and workshops with young learners as well as high school students. NetsBlox is built on top of Snap!, an environment created at the University of California at Berkeley. Snap! is based on Scratch, the best-known programming tool for kids from the MIT Media Lab. Young students use Scratch to create basic Pong-like games, animations or virtual stories. Snap!, a visual drag-and-drop programming language, picks up where Scratch leaves off, making it an appropriate introduction to computer science for high school and college students. Public data sets expand possibilities NetsBlox adds message passing, a way computers communicate with each other; access to a set of online data sources in the public domain – maps, weather, movies, trivia, and earthquakes are a few; and introduces distributed programming. The goal is to make writing a distributed computer program much like solving a simple puzzle. With NetsBlox, for example, an average high school student can create a simple multiplayer game, run it on her phone and play against a friend over the internet after just a few weeks of instruction. The popularity of massively multiplayer online role-playing games made this approach a “no-brainer,” Ledeczi said. The jump to distributed programming and the computational thinking behind it is significant. A distributed program is actually multiple programs running on different computers communicating and synchronizing with each other. Think of the difference between going out to dinner alone or organizing a wedding reception, including picking the date and time, confirming the most important guests can make it, sending invitations, organizing transportation, reserving the place, ordering catering and booking a band. Distributed programming can be far more complex than simple two-person games, but a game introduces the concepts and forces students to program information to send somewhere else plus consider delays and response times. With the data sets, students can create movie quiz games and trivia contests to play with each other. Data on earthquakes, air pollution, astronomy, and weather can be the foundation for a school science project. Read More