How to Teach “Programming” Lecture 1: Education for kids – Lego Mindstorms (NQC: Not Quite C)NQC – Scratch Lecture 2: Unix for Poets – Request: bring a laptop if possible Windows Users: please install – Target audience: Grad Students in Linguistics – Unix shell scripts (almost not programming) – Small is Beautiful Lecture 3: Symbolic Processing – Target audience: MIT Computer Science Majors (circa 1974) – LISP: Recursion, Eval, Symbolic Differentiation – Lambda Calculus (“Small is Beautiful” beyond reason)

Lego Mindstorms Iphone & Lego: – Better Together – VideoVideo Rubik’s Cube: – Video Video Sampler: – video video Knitting Machine: – video video Popular – with target demographic – video video

The Origins of Mindstorms Papert participated in educational projects at MIT which used the forerunners of the Lego Mindstorms system.

Mindstorms When children are young, they are incredibly facile learners. – If your child were to spend some time in France, it is likely he or she will pick up quite a bit of French. – "What would happen," asked Papert, "if children who can’t do math grew up in Mathland, a place that is to math what France is to French?" In the 1970s, Papert constructed a kind of Mathland using the LOGO programming language, and robotic turtles that could draw pictures. – These tools were used by very young kids, who would not ordinarily be exposed to concepts like angles and polygons. – Papert’s book, Mindstorms, recounts this fascinating story.

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Videos

Social Computing – Emphasis: Community & Sharing Man machine interface  Kid2kid Machines should be seen (but not heard) – Scratch = LOGO/LEGO + Web Search Keywords to try: Circle_Circus, Fold Symmetry, Rubik’s Cube, Guitar Hero, BigPaw, Birthday – Instant gratification (Option to Run without downloading) – Source is always available – Lots of Mashups – Comments, tags, more projects by, recommendations, etc. – Stats/Community Feedback: 1116 views, 6 taggers, 64 people love it, 4 remixes by 4 people, 41 downloads, in 3 galleries6 taggers4 remixes3 galleries

Is this Computer Science, Or is this just fun? Social Computing – Emphasis on Community GUI (Graphical User Interface) – Drag-and-drop – Lego Mindstorms on Steroids Manuals/Documentation – Available (but not recommended) Small Language – 8 menus  Circumscribes “reserved” words There are smaller languages – Lambda Calculus – But smaller is not necessarily simpler – Or more accessible Evaluation? – What is Success? For a language? Community?

Homework Suppose you have a 12-year-old kid sister. Design a scratch project for her. Ok to start with some other student’s project and ask her to modify it in some interesting way. The project should be fun (and educational), and make her want to learn more. What are the computer science principles? – Learning Moments (or just plain fun)