SIGCSE 2008 : Portland, OR Rediscovering the Passion, Beauty, Joy and Awe : Making Computing Fun Again 10:30am – 11:45am Lecturer SOE Dan Garcia UC Berkeley

(2/15) Passion, Beauty, Joy, Awe : Ownership & Creativity Thought Exercise #1  Close your eyes  In your mind’s eye…  Think of the last time you felt real physical pain  Questions  What time of day was it?  What was the weather?  Where were you?

(3/15) Passion, Beauty, Joy, Awe : Ownership & Creativity Thought Exercise #2  Close your eyes  In your mind’s eye  Think of any significant experience you wish  Be it pleasurable or not, recent or not, etc.  Questions  What time of day was it?  What was the weather?  Where were you? Which did you prefer, #1 or #2? …and why?

(4/15) Passion, Beauty, Joy, Awe : Ownership & Creativity Why do we do this to our students? We don't need no thought control… Teachers leave those kids alone… – Pink Floyd, The Wall

(5/15) Passion, Beauty, Joy, Awe : Ownership & Creativity Ownership and Creativity!  Traditional projects  YOU give them the spec  YOU tell them what to do  YOU give them the interesting dataset  Rethinking projects!  THEY come up with the project  YOU help them keep their project reasonable  This “calibration” step is critical. Difficulty multiplier?  THEY tell you what their check-ins will be  THEY find the interesting dataset

(6/15) Passion, Beauty, Joy, Awe : Ownership & Creativity This is not Novel!  Montessori method…  Many Jr/Sr-level courses have student- chosen projects  Why not in CS1/CS2?  Extra “calibration” effort is worth it…  Georgia Tech  Computational Media CS1  One reason of success (imho) is it’s THEIR data Wil Justis, Milton HS

(7/15) Passion, Beauty, Joy, Awe : Ownership & Creativity It goes to 11…

(8/15) Passion, Beauty, Joy, Awe : Ownership & Creativity Where have all the flowers gone?  Why do top students have to go away when the class is over?  Why can’t we have incubators to nuture THEIR multi- semester projects?

(9/15) Passion, Beauty, Joy, Awe : Ownership & Creativity GamesCrafters : Game Theory GamesCrafters.berkeley.edu  Undergraduate computational game theory research and development group  ~40 students per semester  They choose their own projects!

(10/15) Passion, Beauty, Joy, Awe : Ownership & Creativity 2007Sp GamesCrafters

(11/15) Passion, Beauty, Joy, Awe : Ownership & Creativity MS-DOS X : Mac Programming  Macintosh Software Developers for OS X  Said: “MS-DOS … not!”  Small & enthusiastic community of budding Mac OS X programmers  Tutorials, UI standards  Design, code reviews  Software pipeline  ~15 students / sem MSDOSX.berkeley.edu

(12/15) Passion, Beauty, Joy, Awe : Ownership & Creativity 2006Fa MS-DOS X students

(13/15) Passion, Beauty, Joy, Awe : Ownership & Creativity  UC Berkeley Undergrad Graphics Group  Goal: bring together the best undergraduate computer graphics & animation talent on campus in one place  CS students and artists!  ~25 students / semester  They work individually & in teams on projects  2D/3D fractals, designs  Procedural geometry  CG Images & animations  Compilation DVD UCBUGG.berkeley.edu UCBUGG : Pixar “light”

(14/15) Passion, Beauty, Joy, Awe : Ownership & Creativity 2006Fa UCBUGGers

(15/15) Passion, Beauty, Joy, Awe : Ownership & Creativity Conclusion  Ownership and Creativity  Tap their passion  Allow THEM to specify their projects  Watch the beauty  Support THEIR interesting multi- semester projects  Share the joy you have  Coding as recreation!  Watch results with awe If you build it… they will come