Yes all kids should learn to program

7th February 2007

posted in design |

My notes from Gary Steger and David Thornburg’s TCEA 2007 session on 2/7/2006. Unfortunately I just caught the last half of this, so I missed David. I recorded Gary’s portion, assuming it turns out I’ll post that as a podcast soon….

www.stager.org/tcea

Bricolage
- hobbyist computing and knitting
- creative computing (1970s)
- Make Magazine (2005)

there is an aesthetic for knitting, a value for it

400,000 people subscribed to Creative Computing in the 1970s
- that is a real successful magazine

Camp wanted to start a computer program
- Deerkill Day Camp
- 1982 - 1986

If you can make your computer do something, people will hire you and pay you, give you a title

Elliot Sollway and Mark wrote a good paper about people running away screaming from college computing courses
- what if we just change the content
- programming in CS101 should have to do with scaling a photograph, doing other things that kids feel are more engaging

The Logo Community
- 1985: Gary met David at Brian Silverman
- presented at MIT, become editor of Logo Exchange
- has spent the rest of his career helping people use computers in creative ways

1990: Laptop Renaissance
- When David Kay flew to MIT and watched kids working, he got so excited
- he sketched the dynabook that become the laptop
- Australian educators began to see that a laptop in the hands of kids, in open-ended constructivist projects was a powerful way to disrupt the traditional educational process and paradigm

US educators looked at this and said: that is what kids could do if they have TIME
- from 85-90 there was a huge renaissance

in 1995 we connected all the computers together again, and that crushed much of the progress that had been made
- converted the computer into a passive learning environment

Worked in Maine prisons, severely at-risk kids
- Angus King realized that doing the same thing louder” wasn’t going to work for these kids
- was able to create the constructionist learning lab, kids called it the lego lab
- kids had to work on projects that were personally meaningful

every adolescent should have two experiences:
- soldering
- developing black and white photographs

real bridge between the analog and the digital
- it is about giving agency to the learner, empowering them

Philadelphia school of the future
- school of sept 7th
- paperless school
- kids get smartcards
- if they want to open their locker, they wave their smartcard over their locker

The smartcard is given agency to track child nutrition instead of the child

The reason for the work we do is to put the child in the center of the learning process

One more quick story on Fractals
- daughter took online math class so she could stay in high school band
- I like to say the only reason I send my kids to school is band
- get a textbook, in the forward it was written by a classroom teacher to discover fractals on a graphing calculator
- fractals are beautiful and you can
- this was developed because kids don’t have

Raising the bar on kindergarten, video from classroom in Australia
- Victoria gov’t was convinced to let Gary teach in a multi-generational, heterogenous classrooms
- had a profound learning experience
- 5 year old told Gary that school doesn’t teach ballerina
- they used the lego environment to spin devices, simulate dancing, engaging the child
- www.stager.org/tcea

computationally rich learning
- John Stetson and Gary Steger created a video

“a good prompt is worth a thousand words”
- if you good ideas, adequate materials, sufficient times, and supportive culture you can create things vastly larger than your own expectations

Authentic problems, real construction materials

if this stuff is such an integral part of kids’ lives, why not use it in more creative and fun ways?

The Technology Ecology

Multimedia is Latin for “it doesn’t work in front of an audience”

Computing matters
- robotics is a physical embodiment of the virtual and the code

Just asking kids to draw their initials with a turtle logo

People in keynotes often say “it’s not about the technology”
- we MUST believe there is something magical about the technology
- came from Gary’s doctoral research in the Maine Prisons
- we could have done lots of things to elevate the self-esteem of students, allowed them to be scientists, engineers, do serious intellectual work

Variety of programming enviornments for learning
- microworlds EX robotics
- more
- all are on Gary’s website

In the 450 pages of my doctoral dissertation: in 3+ years of research
- no broken computers
- no stolen computers
- no missing mouse balls
- no discipline problems
- not a single classroom emergency

Quotation from Edward R Murrow in “Good Night, Good Luck”
” This instrument can teach, it can illuminate,; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it merely wires and lights in a box….”

Gary is toying with the idea of writing

Go to Ballroom B to continue the conversation….

Gary’s session tomorrow 1 - 2:30 in 13B

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