Sonification Blocks: A Block-Based Programming Environment For Embodied Data Sonification

High school students often struggle to find the motivation to learn to program. Music can be a powerful motivator for these students, but existing tools that combine music production with programming often fail to meaningfully engage students with core computer science concepts. Sonification Blocks was created to shift the focus back toward big ideas in programming. Sonification Blocks is a programming language for data sonification, the process of creating audio algorithms and controlling them with streams of data. Its implementation as a block-based language with clear, interactive data visualizers allows high-school-aged learners to develop computational literacy. Furthermore, the act of manipulating sound parameters with data streams that are controlled through body motion may help connect learners with powerful ideas in programming and data science.