Peadar's posterous
Programming and Computational Thinking in the 21st Century
These two documents are part of my recent research into programming and computational thinking.
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I've been thinking a lot about the benefits of teaching programming languages at an early age.
This was inspired by a post on www.bigthink.com
In November 2009, nine researchers from MIT’s prestigious Media Lab were among the eleven authors of a paper* that espoused the value of programming as an essential skill for all. For those who cannot program in the 21st century, they declared solemnly, “It’s as if they can ‘read’ but not ‘write.’” Is it true: will we be lost without the ability to create code?
This question inspires not only ambitious parents who rush to buy iPads for their toddlers, but also professionals who experience a mid-life crisis in the form of a sudden urge to learn Java and join a start-up. Somewhere between the nail-biting parents and men in suits withtheir noses deep in computer books stand the rest of us. We share a growing awareness that technology drives all our daily experiences. Yet technology’s relevance in its raw code form eludes us. Perhaps that is exactly the problem: we only think of programming as“code.”
Instead, the MIT researchers believe that programming is the digital equivalent of Lego pieces. Like Legos, codes can be creatively combined to build interesting new structures that also have intelligence, eg. react to input, print words on the screen, and move from leftto right. In fact, their programming language Scratch is built on these principles, and consists of visual objects that encapsulate code and are popular amongst children who build games and dynamic characters out of them.
The Scratch environment is a far cry from how we traditionally think of coding. For most ofus who have taken or seen our friends suffer through computer science classes in college, programming is dry, time-consuming and difficult. For children using Scratch, programming is fun and creative, teaching them computational programming skills without burdening them in any way. These programming skills are necessary to understand the 21st century, where almost every single industry from construction to biotechnology to warfare involves the useof networked objects being combined to create new products and services.
In fact, this kind of kid-friendly programming provides the ideal environment for children and adults to synthesize our analytical left and creative right brain thinking, a prerequisite for innovation. The moment you hook up such an environment to a maker-bot, you can print out 3D prototypes with very low-level artificial intelligence. Becoming literate has never been so much fun!
Study Hacks and Acing technical courses
How to Think
The influence for this post, came from an article in 'Technology Review'. I believe learning, and relearning will become increasingly important in the 21st century. So learning how one thinks, and the hardware constraints we have is a huge asset.
I'll be working on some more essays related to this.
Study Hacks and Acing technical courses
The Greatest Human Being that ever lived has died
Norman Borlaug is a man I'd never heard of. I'm embarrased to admit that, he however seems to have made a substantial difference to the world. Overpopulation is a problem that human beings increasingly have to worry about, especially as our population comes closer to the 7 billion mark. He developed the strains of wheat that were resistant to disease etc, and helped facilitate less famine in China, Mexico and subsaharan africa. He was also increasingly pro GM food. Something that terrifies me is the anti-scientism that we get in some elitist comfortable academic circles. The sort of people who live in nice apartments in Washington or Brussels not in the brutal poverty of Rwanda, or Mexico. The people who argue that GM food is unnatural. When the word is surely very ill defined. We fly planes, give heating, and communicate via the Internet. Natural went out the window a long time ago. Science contributes to the betterment of society. This is a point that we forget when we discus GM food, or nuclear fuel, and we lose all logic and argue with our emotions - mostly exacerbated by hucksters like Oprah or Hollywood stars. You get to discus nuclear power or GM food when you've at least spent many hours in sweat and toil trying to master these complicated subjects. A superficial knowledge of problems isn't enough, and its upsetting how easily swayed we as human beings are by people on TV that have no real mastery of these subjects - yet pretend to be experts. Expertise has been destroyed by Public Relations companies. Norman Borlaug was a true master and a true humanist, he strived to make the world a better place and he did - his words need to be heeded 'any one who thinks we can keep the current population afloat without chemical fertiliser is sorely mistaken'. So think of that when you next express outrage at Science, and think how you can make the world a better place.
Trying
www.paulgraham.com is the blog page of a hero of mine. Although I regularly run into people who remind you that all of our heroes are made out of the same decaying matter as the rest of us. He talks in one of his posts about 'trying' and 'hacking'. Just hacking something together is important. One of my passions in recent years has been physical training, I changed my body dramatically in my first few years at college playing rugby especially helped in that. I think the confidence that physical training gives you is that you realize (eventually) that all change is hard. This applies to the change in our brains, and our habits, and our everyday actions.
Sometimes if you've mastered something or seen something, you can lose patience with those who are just starting in their journeys. And I really write this article more as a reminder to myself. That as I begin to learn new skills, and improve, and solve new problems, and constantly deal with the growth of actually moving half way across the world - I need to just keep at it. I need to appreciate the moments of increasing amplitude and decreasing amplitude.
And I need to be hard on myself, and have the mental conditions for excellence.
We need to work hard, we need to change, and we need to improve. The world is full of problems to solve. We mustn't forget that!
So help those who are starting on their journey, and be patient with yourself.
Sometimes if you've mastered something or seen something, you can lose patience with those who are just starting in their journeys. And I really write this article more as a reminder to myself. That as I begin to learn new skills, and improve, and solve new problems, and constantly deal with the growth of actually moving half way across the world - I need to just keep at it. I need to appreciate the moments of increasing amplitude and decreasing amplitude.
And I need to be hard on myself, and have the mental conditions for excellence.
We need to work hard, we need to change, and we need to improve. The world is full of problems to solve. We mustn't forget that!
So help those who are starting on their journey, and be patient with yourself.
On Learning
Something I occasionally drift into, is studies of artificial intelligence, and learning in general. I'm currently researching Machine Learning as part of a project in my Internship.
I've been fascinated by the ideas of artificial learning, since I first learned about the late great Alan Turing. Turing proposed the question 'how do we measure that which thinks' so he came up with something logical and rigorous: the Turing Test.
I find it a bit disturbing that Turing isn't talked about in Schools. A maths class that had the option of talking about Turing, and perhaps some basic cryptography would really interest a lot of people. Of course as my dear friend Ben, is always quick to point out to me, its not his job or my job to decide what other people are to do. Thats for other wise people to decide. Its rather fascinating though, that machine learning has led to such things as web crawlers, and programs that can read meta data and categorize data from websites. As we improve our understanding of Bayesian Networks etc, we are gradually getting a better understanding of how statistical the nature of thinking is.
Jonah Lehrer a Neuroscientist pointed out of course, that uncertainty in thinking, was something we didn';t think about for many years. As James Joyce points out in his writing, we don't think in a logical way, we have a medley of thoughts etc.
I've been fascinated by the ideas of artificial learning, since I first learned about the late great Alan Turing. Turing proposed the question 'how do we measure that which thinks' so he came up with something logical and rigorous: the Turing Test.
I find it a bit disturbing that Turing isn't talked about in Schools. A maths class that had the option of talking about Turing, and perhaps some basic cryptography would really interest a lot of people. Of course as my dear friend Ben, is always quick to point out to me, its not his job or my job to decide what other people are to do. Thats for other wise people to decide. Its rather fascinating though, that machine learning has led to such things as web crawlers, and programs that can read meta data and categorize data from websites. As we improve our understanding of Bayesian Networks etc, we are gradually getting a better understanding of how statistical the nature of thinking is.
Jonah Lehrer a Neuroscientist pointed out of course, that uncertainty in thinking, was something we didn';t think about for many years. As James Joyce points out in his writing, we don't think in a logical way, we have a medley of thoughts etc.
