Making images by hand and by code: motivating students with multi-language interactive media application scripting (abstract only)

Calls are growing for computer science faculty to build a citizenry who are fluent with information technology and able to think computationally. While one might hope that our students would naturally understand the importance of such knowledge, many do not. CS faculty must therefore find ways to motivate such students.

In this project, we explore interactive scripting, scripting done while working in an application. Scripting applications allows non-programmers to explore creative spaces and more efficiently accomplish many tasks. The interactive scripting model allows students to mix work they do normally ("by hand") with scripts that they write to better interact with the system ("by code"). Rather than focusing on one language or programming environment, we explore a multilingual approach that supports scripting in the environment the student (or their professor) considers appropriate. The success of the Media Computation approach leads us to focus on media applications, primarily image making and manipulation.

We describe our experience (1) developing and using libraries to support interactive scripting in a functional language and an object-oriented language; (2) extending two open-source graphics applications, the GNU Image Manipulation Program and Inkscape, to support interactive multilingual scripting and (3) building novice-friendly examples and procedures.