Summer Project
The summer project that we (Hanan AlNizami, Eve Powell, and I) have been working on is called the Dance Choreography Tool.
The Dance Choreography Tool is a Culturally Situated Design Tool (CSDT). The idea behind the CSDTs was originally created by Dr. Ron Eglash. CSDTs were originally designed to teach fundamental mathematical concepts through culture and computer simulation. One example would be using the art of African Cornrow braiding to teach concepts of transformational geometry. There is also a version of the dance tool called the BreakDancer Tool: Rotation and Sine Function which connects break dancing moves to math basics. For example, the tool uses rotation to show the user how the dancer moves certain joints in the body to dance. Our group has decided to work on a modified version of the BreakDancer tool that will use the idea of choreographing moves to teach the basics of computer programming.
The Dance Choreography Tool allows that user to script dance movements for a 3D break dancing avatar. To script dance movements, the user will be utilizing a drag and drop system. This means that the user will drag the dancing commands from the control panel to the scripting panel. If the user has scripted the dance movements correctly, the avatar will dance along with the song the user has chosen. The user will also have the ability to choose a stage for their avatar.
By using a drag and drop system, the tool will focus more on the logic behind computer programming rather than struggling with syntax errors, which is a very common problem for beginner programmers. The drag and drop system will also help make our tool less capable of crashing and less frustrating for the user to learn.
The Dance Choreography Tool is still a work in progress, but our group has definitely made a good start with the implementation of the dance tool. To view our progress, click here to view our final presentation of the tool or click here to view the technical paper.