PUPPET: playing and learning in a virtual world Paul Marshall, Yvonne Rogers, and Mike Scaife 1 Interact Lab, COGS University of Sussex Falmer Brighton, BN1 9QH paulma@cogs.susx.ac.uk Abstract When a child is engaged in improvisational play, representations of the activity are transient. Thus, to reflect on or change what has been done requires great effort of memory. This paper argues that by recording aspects of children’s activity while they are engaged in improvisational play, virtual environments can provide powerful tools to support children’s reflection about aspects of narrative. A virtual environment called PUPPET is introduced, which aims to allow children to engage in playful interaction with autonomous agents, while recording dialogue for the characters in the world. An evaluation of the PUPPET system suggests that children found the environment to be a motivating and engaging one. Furthermore, recording and editing dialogue for the characters in the world was found to be successful in eliciting reflective thought and discussion between the children. Keywords Learning, external cognition, reflection, autonomous-agent, improvisation, puppet Biographical Notes Paul Marshall is a DPhil candidate in the school of Cognitive and Computing Sciences at the University of Sussex. His research interests include the use of computers in education and novel forms of human-computer interaction. Yvonne Rogers is the director of the Interact Lab and a professor in the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences at the University of Sussex. She is interested in new paradigms for computing, especially ubiquitous, pervasive and tangible interfaces. Her research focuses on augmenting everyday, learning and work activities with interactive technologies. In particular, she designs external representations, especially dynamic visualisations, to support more effectively 'external cognition'. Introduction Edith Ackermann has described cognitive growth as a “dance between diving-in and stepping-out” [1]. She attempts to reconcile the perspective of theorists working in the situated cognition tradition [2, 3], who emphasise the contexts in which knowledge is created, with the more removed forms of knowledge structure emphasised by theorists such as Piaget [4, 5]. She argues that in order to learn from experience, it is necessary to step back from it momentarily and to reflect upon it in objective terms. Once viewed with detachment, personal experience can then be re-engaged resulting in new understanding. 1 Mike Scaife died suddenly as this work was being carried out. He was its inspiration.