Volume 7 Number 3 - Summer 1999

Computer Games for Kids, by Kids - Part 2 ...continued <--- previous page || next page ---> Conversations Everyone, certainly by the age of ten, is an expert at conversation. Fifth graders have had years of practice fine tuning their conversational skills. They have experimented with new vocabulary, humor, and sarcasm. Making conversation a programmable activity forces students to explore their conversations deeply. They must deconstruct and examine spoken conversation and recognize its elements. Writing an interactive conversation is a natural follow-up to the Madlibs project. It builds on the concepts learned in Madlibs: variables, Logo syntax, and English grammar. But most of all, it's a good introduction to the study of logic. Our class spends about three weeks (6 double periods ) writing conversations. Students are given this starter to work from. The Starter to conversation announce [Hello there. Ready to talk?] question [Who are you?] name answer "person question (se (word :person ",) [are you working hard yet?]) If equal? answer "yes [announce (se [Glad to hear that] :person)] If equal? answer "no [announce [I have a feeling that will change real soon!]] question (se [Did you have pizza today for lunch,] (word :person "?)) Ifelse equal? answer "yes [announce [Yes? Lucky you - it's my favorite lunch!]] [announce [No? I guess they didn't offer it today!]] question (se (word :person ",) [what is your favorite animal?]) name answer "animal ifelse member? :animal [dog puppy dogs puppies] [announce [I love dogs! I have a big apricot crazy poodle!] ] [announce (se [The] :animal [is one of my favorite animals.])] question ( se (word :person ",) [how old are you?] ) if equal? answer 10 [announce [ Ten! You are one decade old!] ] if equal? answer 11 [announce (se [ Eleven! ] word :person ", [you are probably one of the oldest girls in this class.]] if less? answer 10 [announce (se answer [is pretty young] ] if greater? answer 11 [announce (se answer [is kind of old!]) ] announce (se [You're done with this conversation] (word :person ".) [Try it again using different answers.]) announce [After you try it a few times, look at the procedures page to see the programming.] announce [You may add on to this conversation or start a new one.] end Color Coding Procedures We have used text color in order to improve the readability of the conversation programs. Words in blue are procedure calls. Dark blue words are the names of primitives. Light blue is for user-defined procedures. Red is for variables. These words are always preceded by a colon or "dots" in traditional Logo terminology. Green is for the special words to and end. Everything else is in black -- the literal text that is the substance of the conversation itself. Getting Started with the Starter The fifth graders begin programming their conversations by first changing the inputs to question and if. Then they add new questions of their own. When the contents inside the instruction list becomes complicated, we suggest moving those instructions to a subprocedure. For example, in the talk procedure below, if the player does have siblings, the program calls the yessibs procedure where more questions are asked and further branching is required. Using subprocedures makes the programming code neater and easier to read. to talk question ( se (word :person ",) [Do you have any siblings?] ) if equal? answer "yes [yessibs] if equal? answer "no [announce [that's ok]] announce [bye] end     to yessibs announce [I have a sister] question ( se (word :person ",) [Do you have a sister?] ) ifelse equal? answer "yes [yessister] [yesbrother] end   to yessister announce [that's great.] question [How many do you have?] announce [oh] question [Do you have any brothers] if equal? answer "no [announce [that's ok]] if equal? answer "yes [question [How many do you have?] announce [oh]] end   to yesbrother announce [oh you must have a brother.] question [How many do you have?] announce [oh] end Bugs A missing or mismatched bracket is the most frequently occurring bug. The MicroWorlds error message reports only that a bracket is missing. On close inspection, the problem may turn out to be the presence of an extra bracket rather than a missing one. In the Macintosh version of Logowriter, looking for a missing bracket was much easier. A flip to the Procedures Page would place the cursor on the line with the missing bracket. MicroWorlds doesn't have that feature. A trained eye can pick it out more quickly, but students rely on other strategies for finding where the problem is. One approach is to insert end after a few lines of code and exit the Procedures Page to see if an error message appears. If all's clear, go back to the Procedures Page and move end a few lines down. Repeat until the problem spot is found. Variables Examining their use of variables reveals that students don't always fully comprehend when it's necessary to use them. The primitive question displays a dialog box with the text of the question you specify, and a space to type in a response. The primitive answer then reports what was typed in response to the most recent question. This string of text can be given a name as in this snippet of conversation: question se :person [what is your favorite dessert?] name answer "dessert announce [Great!] In this case, using the variable dessert is unnecessary unless the response to this question will be needed later in the program. In fact, since the reply is just "Great!" and doesn't depend upon the response to the question, the program could have been question se :person [what is your favorite dessert?] announce [Great!] Answer would be needed in a case like this: question se :person [what is your favorite dessert?] announce (se [Great! I like] answer [also]) If someone typed in "Apple Pie" in response to the question, the program would announce "Great! I like Apple Pie also." The program could also be written like this: question se :person [what is your favorite dessert?] name answer "dessert announce (se [Great! I like] :dessert [also]) Using the variable dessert isn't necessary. However, many fifth graders do create variables throughout their conversations regardless of necessity. It seems that they are over-applying the rule. Often when when learning a new language, whether it is a 2-year-old learning to speak her native language or an adult learning a second language, one tends to apply grammatical rules to everything until one learns the exceptions and develops a better understanding of how the language works. Here's a case where using the variable dessert would be necessary: question se :person [what is your favorite dessert?] name answer "dessert announce (se [Great! I like] :dessert [also]) question [What's another dessert you like?] name answer "dessert2 announce (se [I like] :dessert [better than] :dessert2) The second question causes Logo to remember a new answer and to forget the first one. To remember the first answer, it needs to be assigned to a variable. However, the second answer did not have to be assigned to dessert2. The program could be question se :person [what is your favorite dessert?] name answer "dessert announce (se [Great! I like] :dessert [also]) question [What's another dessert you like?] announce (se [I like] :dessert [better than] answer)   When using subprocedures, assigning variables to answer is more critical. When the program switches into a subprocedure, answer is still reporting the response to an old leftover question that may have been asked way back in the program. If the programmer is looking for the bug only in that subprocedure it won't be found. Logic Logic is about decision-making based on conditions. In writing their conversations students are setting up the conditions and thinking in terms of what is true and false. They must decide what happens once those conditions are met, or not met. Additionally, they must decide how to construct the instructions. Should they use if or ifelse, and how many if statements would cover the range of possible answers to the question? If takes two inputs, the first input is the condition, which reports "true" or "false." The second input is the instruction list to run if the condition is true. If the condition reports "false," nothing is run and the program continues onward. Ifelse seems to be a more difficult command for students to grasp than if because there is one more piece to keep track of. In ifelse, if the condition reports "false," the second instruction list is run. For some students, creating instructions for "true" and "false" conditions is easier to do as two separate instructions. It's a challenge to reproduce real dialogue. It is impossible to predict all the responses a player may type in. We discuss with the students ways to control the range of possible answers. The starter includes the instructions question [what's your favorite animal?] ifelse member? :animal [dog puppy dogs puppies] [announce [I love dogs! I have a big apricot crazy poodle!] ] [announce (se [The] :animal [is one of my favorite animals.])] Member?, which reports whether or not its first input is a component of its second input, is used here to accept variations of "dog." Sometime students will specify restrictions for the response. For example - in Selena's IQ test, she asks: Question (se [ OK ] :nom [ Who was the first governor of Plymouth? Hint- He was governor for 31 years. First name only!!]) And sometimes, the answer requires more than "yes" or "no." In the example below, this student added the condition of "sometimes" to her statement after having her friends test her conversation. question ( se (word :person ",) [Do you listen to Z100?] ) if equal? answer "yes [announce [Don't they play good songs.]] if equal? answer "no [announce [You should start listening.]] if equal? answer "sometimes [announce [you should start listening all the time.]] Elements of a Good Conversation by Hope Chafiian On a personal note - working with students on these conversations has made me more aware of conversations I have with others. Especially when the conversation becomes strained, I begin breaking it down question by answer. For example, when I returned home from a dinner date, the conversation we had kept running through my head. I began to analyze the dialogue and apply the elements we discuss in class. I realized two important things: My responses didn't alter the direction of the conversation. When my statements were responded to, the responses were slightly off. The person missed the point I was trying to make. It was as if I were conversing with a computer, and the computer was programmed to recognize key words and output set responses. Being over ten years old and therefore an experienced conversationalist, I believe there is a conversation continuum where at one end rests "boring" and the other end rests "interesting." Tone and the relationship between the questions, and responses are two important elements that determine where the conversation lies on that continuum. Other elements also affect the conversation continuum, like humor and sarcasm, but they won't be included in this discussion. Tone is easy to hear in spoken conversation and we're getting used to "seeing" it in written conversation as well. In written dialogue, especially e-mail, tone can be expressed by the font of the text. Size, case and style help us "hear" a conversation better. However, text formatting cannot be altered in the dialogue boxes of MicroWorlds and therefore cannot be recognized in a Logo conversation. In a Logo conversation we must focus on the relationship of the questions and answers by carefully thinking through the conditional statements and using subprocedures. In the example below, notice how the answer in the first question has no bearing on what comes next. question ( se (word :person ",) [What Do you like to do the most?] ) announce [That's great.] question ( se (word :person ",) [What is your favorite TV. show?] ) announce [I love that show too.] It's interesting to discuss conversations in this way with ten and eleven year olds. To accentuate this point in class, we practice speaking boring conversations out loud, and then we do the conversation over again, with the same questions but with interesting responses.

<--- previous page || next page --->