AgentSheets ® Thought Amplifier The Programmed Expression of Ideas Alexander Repenning CS Prof. University of Colorado CEO AgentSheets Inc.

Overview  Part 1: End-User Programming u Kids expressing and communicating ideas u Kids and Robots u Robots and Artists  Part 2: The Connected Agent u Agents on the Web u Talk to your agent

End-User Programming Who needs it? and… Why?

Build simulations  Be able to express and communicate complex ideas  Education u History u Math u Music u Geology u Logic u Programming u Art

Anti Vision “I don’t need to go to France, I have the CD”

Thought Amplification Process Externalize ideas Create & tweak artifacts Visualize consequences Illustrate causality

AgentSheets is an authoring tool allowing end-users to build their own interactive simulations and publish them on the Web

Tactile Programming Beyond visual programming: From increased readability To increased experiencability

AgentSheets History  AgentSheets started at University of Colorado, Boulder 1989  First prototype on Connection Machine  Collaboration with Apple  Company founded in 1996  AgentSheets, Inc. supported by NSF

Demo: Bridge Builder

The Grape Boycott

EcoWorlds Elementary school kids design their own animals, share them through the web and explore the sustainability of the resulting EcoWorlds “I will eat you” “If I lower my reproduction rate this world will become more stable”

AgentSheets in India When the Jiva-Java Project started, its 20 secondary students had never used a mouse or seen the Web. Three weeks later, they had created applets (using Agentsheets authorware) and linked them to their own Web pages –Ed Gaible at the Jiva Institute Faridabad, Haryana, India

LEGOSheets

LEGOSheets in Action

Out of this World (very distance education) NASA used AgentSheets to simulate an “E.coli in microgravity” experiment aboard the space shuttle Discovery with John Glenn

Video Agents

Render Static Data: USGS Map of Boulder, CO, rendered in 3D as simulation background

Integrate Data with Simulation: Mudslide

Program the Web The Connected Agent

Use End-User Programmable Agents to Bridge the Gap between Existing and Relevant Information on the Web

What happens when we enable agents to access Web pages and merge the notions of browsers and simulations?

The Syntactic Web The Semantic Web The Pragmatic Web

Boulder Live The browserless agent-based Web

Why?  Make information accessible to disabled, e.g., blind or motor skill challenged  Have agents access information user controlled, e.g. voice commands, or autonomously  Have agents synthesize new information  Create information processing ecologies: make agents sharable goods ( , Web).  Access information on small wireless devices including PDAs and cell phones

Bridge…  Modalities: e.g., text speech  Time: get information only WHEN it is relevant  Nomenclature: e.g., Fahrenheit Celsius  Languages: English, Spanish, German, …

Agents…  Extract information from existing Web pages

PDA

AgentSheets ® Amplify your Thoughts

Some credentials NAS: Exemplary Information Technology for Education WWW5: “Most Creative Educational Application of the World Wide Web” – Major of Paris NSF: ~$8 million funding ACM1: “Best of the Best Innovator” European Commission: advisor to new End-User Computing initiative