Personalized extensions : democratizing the programming of virtual-physical interactions

Abstract

This thesis describes a new framework that enables a wider range of people to extend and customize programming environments to support more personalized explorations, especially in the physical world. While the vocabulary of the Scratch programming language (http://scratch.mit.edu) can be extended to access hardware devices and web services through Scratch Extensions, creating an extension is not trivial and requires a significant level of technical expertise. This occasionally means having less personalized, more abstract language for those extensions. I describe and analyze the design of Personalized Extensions, an extension mechanism that allows the users of Scratch to personalize abstract Scratch extensions, and consequently help other users to have more meaningful learning experiences in the worlds which Scratch extensions allow them to access. I conclude by reflecting on some case studies where personalized extensions were used, and how they affected the learning experience of the users.