MAS.961 / CMS.870 / 21L.707 / SP.439: Exploring Children's Culture (with Professor Henry Jenkins)
CLASS: T/TH 3:30-5:00; Lab: T 7-10PM in 14E-310

This course is intended to place current debates about childhood and children's media technologies within their larger historical, social and technological contexts. Students will examine children's culture (and the myths adults construct for and about children) from psychological, sociological, anthropological, historical, critical, pedagogical and technological perspectives. We will also critically engage with key examples of books, films, television programs, and digital media artifacts aimed at children. Our goal is to gain insights into the nature of children's lives, their culture, their relationship to the media, and the social institutions they confront. An intrinsic part of the course will be to reflect on (and engage with) the problems of creating new media for children, and recurrent efforts by adults to regulate children's culture and play.

MAS736: Theory and Practice in Discourse and Dialogue for
Interactive Systems
WEDS 12:30 PM-3:30 PM in E15-335

In order to be effective designers of systems that communicate with humans (or systems that support humans communicating amongst themselves), we need to have a certain background in how the language of discourse functions. That is, how do we convey intention through language? How do we convey not just intention, but the finer points of style: something new, something relevant, something polite, something intimate? Why are some ways of putting things easier to understand than others? And, how do we structure interactions to take advantage of the design features of language (reference to things or people that aren't in the immediate environment, to things that don't exist), and of human bodies (the discourse functions of faces, hands, bodies)?

In this course we pair theory about how the language of discourse functions with computational work that relies on that theoretical foundation. The goal is to give students practice in how theory in this domain can be adapted and adopted in the design of innovative interactive technology. To this end, the student will engage in a increasingly complex set of design exercises based on the nitty-gritty fundamentals of discourse, and culminating in a project of the student's own design. This year we will be concentrating in particular on intention and grounding phenomena -- how people ensure that their intentions are conveyed, and their conversational partners are following along.

Fall 2000

MAS736: Theory and Practice in Discourse and Dialogue for
Interactive Systems
THURS 12:00 PM-3:00 PM in E15-335

In order to be effective designers of systems that communicate with humans (or systems that support humans communicating amongst themselves), we need to have a certain background in how the language of discourse functions. That is, how do we convey intention through language? How do we convey not just intention, but the finer points of style: something new, something relevant, something polite, something intimate? Why are some ways of putting things easier to understand than others? And, how do we structure interactions to take advantage of the design features of language (reference to things or people that aren't in the immediate environment, to things that don't exist), and of human bodies (the discourse functions of faces, hands, bodies)?

In this course we pair theory about how the language of discourse functions with computational work that relies on that theoretical foundation. The goal is to give students practice in how theory in this domain can be adapted and adopted in the design of innovative interactive technology. To this end, the student will engage in a increasingly complex set of design exercises based on the nitty-gritty fundamentals of discourse, and culminating in a project of the student's own design. This year we will be concentrating in particular on language as social action -- how to do nice things with words / how to make relationships with words.

Spring 2000

CMS.870 / 21L.707 / SP.439: Exploring Children's Culture (with Professor Henry Jenkins)
CLASS: MW 3:30-5:00; Lab: W 7-10PM

This course is intended to place current debates about childhood and children's media technologies within their larger historical, social and technological contexts. Students will examine children's culture (and the myths adults construct for and about children) from psychological, sociological, anthropological, historical, critical, pedagogical and technological perspectives. We will also critically engage with key examples of books, films, television programs, and digital media artifacts aimed at children. Our goal is to gain insights into the nature of children's lives, their culture, their relationship to the media, and the social institutions they confront. An intrinsic part of the course will be to reflect on (and engage with) the problems of creating new media for children, and recurrent efforts by adults to regulate children's culture and play.

MAS123: Tools for Thought (with Professor Mitchel Resnick & Professor Brian Smith)
CLASS: MW 10:30-12:00

Examines how technological tools support new ways of thinking and learning. Considers the role of toys, microworlds, language tools, and virtual communities in the learning process. Emphasizes the use of artifacts as representational and expressive aids for learning, problem-solving, and communication. Students explore tools-to-think-with, analyze them, and design new ones.

MAS962: Techniques for Interactive Animated Characters (with Professor Bruce Blumberg)
TH 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM in E15-335

Animation is the art of revealing a character's inner thoughts and feelings through its actions and the quality of those actions. Professional animators use their intuitions about human motivation and behavior to make their characters seem as if they are truly alive. As animation increasingly pervades systems that interact with humans, however, animated characters must run autonomously, independent of human designers; hand-crafted animation techniques will not suffice for such systems.

In this course we draw on readings from classical animation, computational linguistics, computer graphics, and artificial intelligence to address the problem of building interactive animated characters who not only "think" for themselves, but who also convey their beliefs and desires clearly and convincingly through word and action. Topics to be covered include: lessons from classical animation, motion specification, control and planning, computational models of motivation, emotion, adaptation, and action selection, natural language generation, natural language instructions, speech, facial animation and gesture generation. Since many of these topics represent unsolved research problems, our goal is to understand the nature and scope of the problem and introduce the student to promising research in the area. We also put particular emphasis on taking a holistic approach to interactive character design. That is, a character who does the walk, better do the talk.

MAS962: Theory and Practice in Discourse and Dialogue for
Interactive Systems
W 10:00 AM-12:00 PM in E15-054

In designing interactive technology we often rely on an implicit knowledge of human language. Some of this knowledge of human language concerns the meanings of words. But, much of it also concerns the meaning of larger units of language such as segments of texts and conversations, as well as their nonverbal correlates, such as head nods & hand gestures. In order to be effective designers, we need to have a certain background in how the language of discourse functions. That is, how do we convey intention through language? How do we convey not just intention, but the finer points of style: something new, something relevant, something polite? Why are some texts particularly effective? And, how do we structure discursive interactions to take advantage of the design features of language (reference to non-present or non-existent entities, for example), and of human bodies (the discourse functions of faces, hands, bodies)?

In this course we pair theory about how the language of discourse functions with computational work that relies on that theoretical foundation. The goal is to give students practice in how theory in this domain can be adapted and adopted in the design of innovative interactive technology. To this end, the student will engage in a increasingly complex set of design exercises based on the nitty-gritty fundamentals of discourse, and culminating in a project of the student's own design.

Tools for Thought (MAS 123)

MAS736: Discourse
Th 3:00-5:00 PM in E15-095

MAS962: Storytelling and Other Kinds of Verbal Play
(Virtual Literary Salon)
T 3:00-5:00 PM in E15-054

A literary salon is a place where people come together to talk and engage in forms of verbal play. We are using technology to enhance this social discourse, not by creating a virtual community or enabling communication at a distance, but by drawing the attention of copresent users to various kinds of communication and metacommunication, enriching their verbal skills and linguistic awareness. To this end, we are building tables with a variety of unconventional input and output methods, which will be linked by both a traditional network and a visual representation of the flow of conversation. In this space we can investigate the nature of, and the interplay among, the message, the medium, and the channel used in communication among both people who do not know each other and the members of a group.