THE DESIGN AND EVOLUTION OF TURBOTURTLE, A COLLABORATIVE MICROWORLD FOR EXPLORING NEWTONIAN PHYSICS

TurboTurtle is 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 presenc e or absence of walls. Students explore the microworld by manipulating a variety of parameters, and learn concepts by studying the behaviour s and interactions that occur. TurboTurtle has evolved into a ''group- aware'' system where several students, each on their own computer, can simultaneously control the microworld and gesture around the shared d isplay. TurboTurtle's design rationale includes concepts such as equal opportunity controls, simulation timing, concrete vs. abstract contro ls, recoverability, and how strictly views should be shared between st udents. Teachers can also add structure to the group's activities by s etting the simulation environment to an interesting state, which. incl udes a set of problems and questions. Observations of pairs of young c hildren using TurboTurtle highlight extremes in collaboration styles, from conflict to smooth interaction. Finally, the technical work in ma king TurboTurtle group-aware is slight, primarily because it was built with a groupware toolkit called GroupKit. (C) 1998 Academic Press.