The Bricklayer Ecosystem - Art, math, and code

Abstract

This paper describes the Bricklayer Ecosystem - a freely-available online educational ecosystem created for people of all ages and coding backgrounds. Bricklayer is designed in accordance with a "low-threshold infinite ceiling" philosophy and has been successfully used to teach coding to primary school students, middle school students, university freshmen, and in-service secondary math teachers. Bricklayer programs are written in the functional programming language SML and, when executed, create 2D and 3D artifacts. These artifacts can be viewed using a variety of third-party tools such as LEGO® Digital Designer (LDD), LDraw, Minecraft clients, Brickr, as well as STereoLithography viewers.