THE DESIGN AND EVOLUTION OF TURBO TURTLE, A COLLABORATIVE MICROWORLD FOR EXPLORING NEWTONIAN PHYSICS
Date
1995-03-01
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Abstract
This paper describes the evolution and on-going development of
TurboTurtle, a dynamic multi-user microworld for the
exploration of Newtonian physics. With TurboTurtle, students can
alter the attributes of the simulation environment, such as gravity,
friction, and presence or absence of walls. They can also manipulate
the "turtle" (a movable ball) directly. Students can adjust its
position, velocity and mass; change its kinetic and potential energy;
and apply a force to it by strapping a rocket to its back. Students
explore the microworld by manipulating these parameters, and learn
concepts by studying the behaviours and interactions that occur.
TurboTurtle has gone through three major evolutions. It began as a
rudimentary command line extension to Logo, and became a dynamic
simulation environment driven by a graphical user interface. Most
recently, TurboTurtle has become "group-aware", where several students,
each on their own computer, can simultaneous control the microworld
and gesture around the shared display. In this final version, teachers
can add structure to the group's activities by setting the simulation
environment to an interesting state, which includes a set of problems
and questions. The rationale behind the major design decisions in
each step are presented. We also discuss the technical aspects of
making TurboTurtle group-aware with a groupware toolkit called
GroupKit.
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Computer Science