Toward Computational Making with Madeup

With the increasing availability of inexpensive miniature computers, networked appliances, and 3D printers, many consumers are returning to their "maker" roots, preferring to invent technologies to address personal needs instead of buying ready-made solutions. This maker movement confers many benefits to society: the growth of open source software and open standards, the proliferation of sharing sites where individuals freely publish design files, and communities of practice whose core values include education of new members. Sadly, the first two benefits may undermine the third: the maker movement generates much more stuff to consume. A school may purchase a 3D printer for educational purposes, only to have its student-makers simply download and print other people's models without learning to make their own. To prevent this kind of situation, educators must capitalize on the maker movement in ways that facilitate what we call computational making, which involves both meaningful cognition and the making of artifacts. In this paper, we describe one such way: a programming language named Madeup for generating 3D models.