Computers and Robots in Education Using Computing to Understand the World Mark Guzdial, Georgia Institute of Technology The Institute for Personal Robots in Education with Tucker Balch, Doug Blank, Deepak Kumar, Stewart Tansley, Jared Jackson, Natasha Eilbert, Keith O’Hara, Daniel Walker, Gaurav Gupta, Jay Summet, and Monica Sweat

Leonardo used painting to understand his world “He who despises painting loves neither philosophy or nature. If you despise painting, which is the sole imitator of all the visible works of nature, you will be certainly despising a subtle invention which brings philosophy an subtle speculation to bear upon the nature of all forms- sea and land, plants and animals, grasses and flowers…’ “… whatever exists in the universe, in essence, in appearance, in the imagination, the painter has first in his mind and then in his hand.’

If Leonardo were alive today, he’d use a computer! A computer allows us to represent the world: Pictures Sounds Stories Movement And make it interactive. The Computer is da Vinci’s “painting” for understand all the world’s nature.

Teaching Computing in the World at Georgia Tech At Georgia Tech: Every student must take a course in computer science. We offer 3 different introductory courses, each contextualized: Taught using examples that draw on the students’ world. Using computing to understand the world

Contextualized Computing Education at Georgia Tech 3 Courses: Introduction to Media Computation: Understanding how digital media work Introduction to Engineering Computing: Understanding how Engineers create the world with computing. Introduction to Computing with Robots: Understanding how robots work in the world.

Using the computer to understand sound Sounds are waves of air pressure Sound comes in cycles The frequency of a wave is the number of cycles per second (cps), or Hertz (Complex sounds have more than one frequency in them.) The amplitude is the maximum height of the wave

Turning Sounds into Numbers for the Computer Remember in calculus, estimating the curve by creating rectangles? We take samples: The amount of air pressure at any moment in time. We take these samples very often. For CD- quality sound, 44,100 times per second! Each sample is +/- 32,000

How would Leonardo use a computer to understand sound? Live Demo: What makes different instruments different? What does it mean to increase volume? How do humans understand speech?

Using Robots to understand Computing: IPRE Overview Research Project Mission: explore making CS education more fun and effective through the context of a personal robot Target: All levels, from middle school to graduate school Joint effort hosted at Georgia Tech with Bryn Mawr College (+ MSR)‏ 3 year seed funding provided by Microsoft Research (MSR)‏ Special ingredient and hypothesis: A personal robot for every student

Personal Robot Every student gets their own robot Small enough to carry in backpack Cost about the price of a textbook Wireless, controlled from computer Interactive and easy to program Personalizable More than “just a robot”

IPRE Pilot Hardware Kit Featuring Parallax’s Scribbler 6 Light sensors 7 IR sensors Stall sensor Speaker 5 LEDs 2 motors Bluetooth wireless Camera Gamepad

Scribbler with IPRE Fluke Now available at

IPRE’s Philosophy The Personal Robot provides the context The needs of the curriculum drive the design of the robot, software, and text The software should be easy to pick up, but scales with experience An accessible, engaging environment for new, diverse students Computer Science != programming Computing as a social activity Computing as a medium for creativity Focus on performances rather than competitions

Curriculum Goals Bring in examples from other related disciplines (e.g., biology, AI) ‏ Explicitly focus on robotics rather than programming constructs (e.g., chapter titles such as “Building Brains” rather than “Variables” or “Loops”) ‏ But, implicitly focus on Computing We believe this defines the notion of a context … and would work equally well with gameotics

Curriculum Goals Bring in examples from other related disciplines (e.g., biology, AI) ‏ Explicitly focus on robotics rather than programming constructs (e.g., chapter titles such as “Building Brains” rather than “Variables” or “Loops”) ‏

Using Robots to Learn Computing

Programming as a social activity

Making stories with robots

19 Robot Movies Wonderful project by Jay Summet: Creative, Collaborative, and Parallel! Robots are characters. Multiple characters mean multiple students with multiple robots. One robot is camera How do you zoom? Aim and go forward! Challenges: How do you know when your actors are in their places? How do you “cue” the others? Post-processing media computation for eerie disappearing effects.

Example Movie

Connections to Biology and Psychology

Modeling Animals How do animals sense light? Why do moths move to the light? How do they know which way to turn to get there? Does it matter if you see vs. smell? We can model light-seeking behavior as a way to understand animals using robots

Audibly signaling a turn def signalingTurn(): left = 0 right = 2 while timerRemaining(10): if robot.getLight(left) < robot.getLight(right): robot.beep(0.25,400) if robot.getLight(right) < robot.getLight(left): robot.beep(0.25,800) signalingTurn()

“Civic Computing”

Initial Assessment What was the most important or interesting thing that you learned in this course? "That computer science can be creative!"

Assessment Results Two main trials so-far: Spring 2007: Attitudes robot (GT and Bryn Mawr) and non-robot (GT) ‏ Interviews to establish themes Surveys to test themes across whole class Fall 2007: More careful testing of learning, same groupings

Attitudes in Spring 2007 All students enjoyed the robot, were comfortable with it, and found it easy to get working. Personalizing the robot improved the course, in students’ opinion. Reported that the class was about computer science Found homework challenging

Differences in Attitudes Spring 2007 BMC students did more on homework “because it was cool.” BMC students were undeclared majors. Reported being more excited about CS afterward. GT students were already declared majors. Less excited about robots overall, but more interested than BMC in more courses in computer science.

W’s vs. F’s, statistically significant

Bryn Mawr College Data for 12 years of CS2 CS2 Data Structures Enrollment

Looks Promising! CS2 Data Structures Enrollment

Others: Storytelling, Music Video, Analysis

Combining Sound and Robotics Learn about music by making a robot musician

Conclusions Leonardo da Vinci would have used the computer to understand his world. We have shown today using computing and robots to learn about sound, biology, and stories. Through the context of a Personal Robot we hope to make computing more personal, interesting, and effective Initial assessment shows that students learn about computing, find it challenging, yet enjoyable