Mr. Rogers Sustainable Neighborhood: a visual language case study for community education

Abstract

Physical board games and the construction of physical models have been shown to be a valuable vehicle for education and communication, for use in the classroom as well as for issues of collaboration and conflict resolution. However, they are limited by their own physical nature. The use of a physical board game is limited to one location.Our research posed the question: Can we bring the benefits of these situationbased physical games to a computational mediumadding the new benefits of the World Wide Webwhile preserving the accessibility and usefulness of the games? This case-study paper outlines our work on Mr. Rogers Sustainable Neighborhood and its journey from physical board game to a computational version, using the Visual AgenTalk (VAT) visual language, and the Agentsheets-based educational system WebQuest. W e describe Mr. Rogers Sustainable Neighborhood as a physical game and its stakeholders, and discuss the applicability and effectiveness of the VAT language for this problem.

Mister Rogers (1928-2003) Through the Holistic “Health & Wellness” Lens

“…2 Fred Rogers' own death is not an ending to what he has accomplished: His work stays beyond him to teach children. He has inspired continuity as discussed earlier with Perrone et al 36 in Mr.…”

“…35 The Environment Caring for the environment was one of Rogers' major missions, which inspired the creation of a computerized board game to teach Mr. Rogers Sustainable Neighborhood. 36 Players model a computerized language to recreate situations promoting community sustainable: "Mr. Rogers Sustainable Neighborhood is a game designed to teach about complex issues of Sustainability". 36(pp396) Yet, the world was not ready for those lessons, even though King and Lindey 37 rearticulated the urgency announced by Rogers in predicting a popular and imminent environmental apocalypticism with annihilation, fear, and horror in a collapsing world where nothing can be done.…”

Getting in on the (inter)action

“…As we began to explore how computational media might learn from and contribute to this work, an initial attempt was made to move the neighborhood game into the computer. As a result, the Mr Roger's Sustainable Neighborhood simulation game [Perrone et al, 1997] was created. The game board was made into a dynamic simulation that updated neighborhood situations based on decisions that were made by the players.…”

Integrated Virtual Learning System for Programmable Logic Controller*

“…These subjects include accounting [8], decision making skill acquisition [9], and engineering education [10,11]. Perrone, et al [12] presents a case study of converting a physical board game (Mr. Roger's Sustainable Neighborhood) into a medium that can be accessed via the World Wide Web. The result was very positive, preserving not only the usefulness of the board game but also increasing its accessibility.…”