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Using computer programs to analyze creative writing is a branch of digital humanities – a field so new that it's still considered controversial in certain circles. "In the academy, I think it's viewed with a mixture of excitement and apprehension," Professor Ted Underwood said. However, Underwood's father is in computer science, and Underwood spent summers during his undergraduate years working for his dad, writing computer programs. Combining that skill with his passion for literature comes naturally to the English professor, but he realizes it may not come so easily to his colleagues. "What I'm trying to do now is create tools that will make it easier for other researchers to use this bigger collection," he said.
That might seem obvious to some, but it's worth dwelling on in an education context. Coding is just a fundamental tool, the same way writing in English and algebra are. Moreover, having a basic understanding of how technology actually functions and is developed is becoming important across more and more industries. Yet most schools don't treat it that way. They look at it as a niche. Later on in the day, during a Q&A with Minnesota Senator Amy Klobouchar, an audience member expressed frustration with the fact that not every state treats computer programming as a course that can fulfill core math requirements the way, say, algebra does. Perhaps it's time to change that. Or, at more ambitious schools, maybe it's time to think of ways to work coding into other subjects, the way students exercise their writing skills in social studies, or with science papers.
Brookville Elementary students engaging in a programming lab at Miami. Computational thinking is not the study of computer science, but rather a paradigm that is increasingly becoming more necessary as the traditional liberal arts begin to encounter problems of scale. The concepts of computational thinking include fundamental concepts of computer science including identifying and restating the problem in order to understand the domain and context, analyzing alternative solutions to determine the best way to attack a problem (often using abstraction, decomposition, and tradeoff analysis to make seemingly intractable problems tractable), working in multidisciplinary teams to solve large problems that no one person can solve alone, and putting all of the gained knowledge together in order to produce a solution.
EdSurge (blog)
Learn To Code, Code To Learn
EdSurge (blog)
The act of writing also engages people in new ways of thinking. As people write, they learn to organize, refine, and reflect on their ideas. In the process of learning to code, people learn many other things. They are not just learning to code, they are coding to learn.
See more from the AT&T Archives at http://techchannel.att.com/archives NOTE: film is silent. A corollary to A Computer Technique for the Production of Animated Movies, the film illustrates the first part of the process, what the program looked like and how the program would be fed into the computer and rendered. From 1964. we've come a long way!
What is Computational Thinking? One of the exciting things about learning Computer science is that you learn a new and fundamental way of thinking and problem solving; a way of thinking that is critical in the 21st Century. It is called "Computational Thinking" and the idea that this is one of the big advantages of studying computer science, whatever your ultimate career, is causing a big stir. Some are even claiming it should be added to reading, writing and arithmetic as a core ability that every person should learn.
Any system that cannot be put together from a simple formula is computationally irreducible. That means, computation of the final configuration requires the same effort as the system has gone through to create itself — there is no computational reduction or shortcut possible. This situation corresponds to what physicist and computer scientist Stephen Wolfram has defined as “computational irreducibility” (see his book A New Kind of Science, 2002).
Though realization of this effort remains distant, it's notable to show how the thinking--and money--is moving to scale 3-D printing well beyond the desktop.
Further out on the horizon, this scenario means a greater coupling of biosystems and computation to evolve the living city. Bacteria will be engineered to target specific materials, like aging concrete. Released into cities, they will replace the old stuff with new bacterial glue that’s structurally sound, networked, and computational. Other bacteria could perform similar maintenance by retrofitting aging utility conduits and faded solar skins. Protocell computers could also be released into ecosystems, sensing chemical properties and transmitting them on mesh networks to remote dashboards. Vats of bacteria will pump out fuels, protein resources, and water.
Nearly a year ago, the previous post in this series introduced a way for programmers to play around with biology: a model that simulated the dynamics of a whole cell at unprecedented levels of deta. Could the future of scalable quantum computers be in the noisy world of biology, instead of the sterility of superconductors, photon benches, or ion-traps?
"Perhaps we need a paradigm shift. Perhaps we need to see technology and the humanities not as a binary but as two sides of a necessarily interdependent, conjoined and mutually consitutive set of intellectual, educational, social, poilitical, and economic practices.More to the point, we need to acknowledge how much the massive computational abilities that have transfomed the sciences have also changed our field in ways large and small and hold possibilities for far greater transformation..."
But game-based-learning-with-technology appeals to many educators, too.
...as the ed-tech industry continues to refine personalized learning tools for game-based "blended learning" in America's classrooms, I urge educators to elevate learning to the next level by empowering youth to not only use gaming technology for play (or assessment), but also to become the architects of it all. Because along with that will come students' architecting their own learning, while driving deeper learning, computational creativity and invention.
Its efforts come at a time when some experts are claiming that computer-programming knowledge is integral to staying ahead in the technology age.
In fall 2009, Dan Garcia, a professor in the department of electrical engineering and computer sciences, piloted a new and revamped computer science course for nonmajors called Computer Science 10: The Beauty and Joy of Computing. CS 10 is a lab-based class in which students learn the basics of programming that can be applied to any field of study. The class serves as a model for the new AP Computer Science course being developed by the National Science Foundation for high school students. “We live in an era where folks are growing up digitally literate, but they are only literate as passive consumers of digital content,” Garcia said. “We believe that this is a crucial time where people need to be not just consumers but producers of their futures.”
Born in 1940, computer scientist Alan Curtis Kay is one of a handful of visionaries most responsible for the concepts which have propelled personal computing forward over the past thirty years.
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Forty years ago, when large mainframe computers roamed the earth, few experts gave much thought to how these mammoth machines could be used for education, and fewer still about how they could help young learners create, explore, and learn through technology. At the time, highly trained programmers still worked in inaccessible languages that mainly processed numbers. But all that changed with a turtle. In 1967, MIT professor Seymour Papert and colleagues developed Logo, an early language for children. Its main innovation? A small robot--the turtle--that students could easily program to move or rotate. For the first time, young programmers got instant feedback and a physical manifestation of their commands.
"I don't think any high school classes could prepare someone fully for a hackathon," says Jennie. "I've been lucky that my dad has been able to teach me a lot, but I also learn a lot through friends, and sites likeStackOverflow. The three computer classes have given a solid foundation as a programmer, but I find myself learning a completely new concept -- like a new language -- every hackathon. I think between the three hackathons I've attended this year, and the year-long AP Computer Science class, I've learned exponentially more at hackathons."
Cordis News An expedition into the programmable city Cordis News Indeed, some analysts predict that we are entering a new phase of 'everyware', where computational power will be distributed and available at any point on the planet for people to use...
Swarms. Hive minds. The web. It can be hard to avoid talking about our digital culture without using insect metaphors. Yet for new media theorist Jussi Parikka, it may be more than just a metaphor.
Using boardgames to understand computational thinking. References to Catan, Pandemic, and Red November. http://t.co/bg18SnOkbK
Deep-learning software attempts to mimic the activity in layers of neurons in the neocortex, the wrinkly 80 percent of the brain where thinking occurs.
All this has normally cautious AI researchers hopeful that intelligent machines may finally escape the pages of science fiction. Indeed, machine intelligence is starting to transform everything from communications and computing to medicine, manufacturing, and transportation. The possibilities are apparent in IBM’s Jeopardy!-winning Watson computer, which uses some deep-learning techniques and is now being trained to help doctors make better decisions. Microsoft has deployed deep learning in its Windows Phone and Bing voice search.
Angelina: An AI That Makes Video Games - InventorSpot Inventorspot That fascinating program appears to have become the basis of much of the Computational Creativity Group's work, while The Dancing Salesman Problem serves as a reminder of the capabilities - and limitations - of AI.
“Computing for All” is an important goal. “Access to Computing Education for All” is critical. “Universal Computing Education to achieve Universal Computing Literacy” is likely to be ineffective and will be very expensive. On the other hand, requiring computing education may be the only way to broaden participation in computing.
Smartgeometry is a four day workshop that looks at how digital tools and computational design are affecting architecture. In recent years, workshop participants have expanded beyond developing design software and have begun developing interactive hardware. The "Bioresponsive Building Envelopes" cluster at Smartgeometry 2012 in Rensselaer, New York developed a unique computational approach to designing interactive facades.
Each of the three traditional domains studies the interactions among a characteristic set of structures and processes. In the physical sciences, it's the story of non-organic materials and the forces operating on them. In the life sciences, it's living organisms and the processes of reproduction, metabolism, evolution, etc. Humans, organizations and societies and their thought processes and behaviors make up the social sciences. The dynamic behavioral richness yielded by processes interacting with structures is what elevates each of these subjects into a great scientific domain. In the computing sciences, information and its transformation similarly produce a behavioral richness that is characteristic of a great scientific domain.
They figured that students needed only what's considered “computer literacy,” a grasp of the basics — Word, Excel, PowerPoint. But learning computer science teaches kids how to think. The science itself teaches the 21st century skills, which are: critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration.
Could all the money and effort being pumped into education reform be missing something? Like, say, computer science?
Which is a little silly considering what a piece of cake it is to intrigue a distracted middle-schooler with electronics. As Powers says, “We find it easiest to integrate c.s. from the get-go. Kids love the creative nature of computing.”
We’ve grown so accustomed to technology that we hardly ever question how the machines and applications we use operate. What would once have looked like witchcraft to us has become mundane. But the need for high-skilled programmers has skyrocketed—so why aren’t more creative visionaries stepping up to learn code?
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Computer science and computational thinking offering new insights in the humanities. Computational thinking is impacting and helping us learn more about every field of knowledge.