Pet Park : a virtual learning world for kids

Pet Park is a graphical, networked virtual world for kids. Kids can log in to Pet Park over the Internet to talk with other kids and create new pets. They can design behaviors for their pets by writing scripts with a simple programming language for kids called YoYo. Pet Park is a collaborative building environment that recognizes the importance of community support for construction. This thesis discusses the differences between graphical online worlds like Pet Park and their text-based cousins. Many of these differences have important ramifications for the design and implementation of constructionist graphical environments. This thesis goes on to present a set of design criteria for a next generation of graphical learning worlds.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1998

Author dc:creator

• De Bonte, Austina M. (Austina Marija), 1975-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Mitchel Resnick.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/49799

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/49799