Linda Liukas 🇫🇮

The grammar of computers: science, society, technology and arts

Does computer science belong in engineering, science or arts? Are computers a tool or a toy? Computing education, as much as it is about learning to code, is also about creating a language for the children to talk about the world. This talk is made of computer science, stories, pedagogy, wonder, interdependency between theory and practice and one children’s book author trying to braid them all together.

Spurningar og svör eftir fyrirlestur

Q1 We are getting reports that the common core in Finland is changing and that the big change is that subjects are being cut out and the emphasis will be on topics? Is that true? I would like to get your point of view in context with your lecture. 

In Finland we change the core curriculum roughly every ten years - the last time it changed was in 2016. This is when the idea of phenomenon based learning was introduced on the core curriculum.. A lot of news outlets reported that Finland was getting rid of subjects (see for example BBC), but this wasn’t strictly true. Rather, we gave teachers one more tool of autonomy.  

In my opinion, a big part of the strength of Finnish educational system is the autonomy we give for our teachers. We don’t have school-inspection, standardised testing, teachers are not micromanaged and they have a lot of freedom to decide on how and what they want to teach compared to many other teachers. The common core gives very general objectives, like “all children should learn the basics of computational thinking”. What municipalities and schools then do, is create their own detailed learning outcomes, syllabi and teaching methods. 

A long segway, but back to your question. The ideas of multi-disciplinary, phenomenon and project-based studies are outlined in the core curriculum as a national goal, but what and how these are realized happens on a school level. For example, one school I visited built a greenhouse with sensors, grew vegetables and learned about biology, environment, cooking, technology skills, analysis, math, cooking, teamwork and a whole lot more. Other schools might have a separate class for each of these things. The core curriculum gives room for both. 

I think one of the great Finnish scholars to follow on this topic is Pasi Sahlberg - I’m personally looking very much forward to his new book called Finnish Lessons 3.0!  And here’s a short booklet on the common core  by our Board of Education 

Q2 Why is it that the very interesting world of programming is such a challenge for us grownups. How can we change that? 

The first challenge is that programming is very foreign to many of us. Most of us lack childhood moments that are mediated through programming and technology and as a result we don’t feel confident around computers nor on helping our children learn them. Those growing up in the 70s and 80s (and even us 90s kids) feel nostalgia for baking or ice hockey practice, but don’t have memories of playing Fortnite, designing MInecraft mods or programming websites with out families. 

The second challenge goes deeper than culture. One of the concepts computer scientists love is the idea of exploit/explore. You can look it up with the name multi-armed bandit problem -  in essence, the dilemma of whether to repeat decisions that have worked well so far (exploit) or to make novel decisions, hoping to gain even greater rewards (explore). In computer science, this question is very relevant when it comes to machine learning, but it also offers a perspective to answering the question above. 

The world is so big, so complicated, so full of marvels and surprises that the only way is to take it all in, not by tip-toe but by a belly-flop.  We call this period of research “childhood exploration”, but as adults we tend to exploit what we already know and understand about the world. 

“A long childhood allows for a kind of developmental division of labour, with an early protected period devoted to learning and exploration and a later adult period devoted to directed exploitation based on what has been learned earlier” describes Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. 

More on Alisons work: http://alisongopnik.com/

Q3 How can we “the grownups” implement the computational thinking into these kind of colorful and fun projects for our students, like you are showing us?

By starting with Ruby’s wisdom - even the biggest problems in the world are just tiny problems, stuck together! I think the first step is to try something, a tiny, minuscule, baby thing and see the student reaction. That’s also why I designed a video series called Computer Science in 60 seconds - the idea is that a teacher can ask the children to watch a video (in one minute), complete the task of the video and then hold a discussion or show & tell for the classroom. 

You can find the videos here: http://helloruby.com/csin1minute

The activities here: helloruby.com/play

And there is a teacher training course here you can follow to learn more: 

helloruby.com/loveletters

Q4 How do you make this teaching method more suitable for teenagers? 

I do think the same principles - fearlessness, wonder and curiosity when it comes to technology - are relevant for teenagers, but teenagers are very different from the inquisitive six year olds I mostly work with, so I claim to be no expert. I’ve been very impressed with the work of Code.org and Khan Academy on the computer science front.  Sometimes I’ve had teenagers work with the younger kids on Ruby activities, this allows them to be a bit more childish and enter the world of fresh-eyed wonder and imagination more easily. 

Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding

Meet Ruby―a small girl with a huge imagination, and the determination to solve any puzzle. As Ruby stomps around her world making new friends, including the Wise Snow Leopard, the Friendly Foxes, and the Messy Robots, kids will be introduced to the fundamentals of computational thinking, like how to break big problems into small ones, create step-by-step plans, look for patterns and think outside the box through storytelling.

Hello Ruby: Journey Inside the Computer

What exactly is a computer? How does it work? What is it made of? Learn all this and more with Ruby!

In Ruby's world anything is possible if you put your mind to it―even fixing her father's broken computer! Join Ruby and her new friend, Mouse, on an imaginative journey through the insides of a computer in search of the missing Cursor.

Hello Ruby: Expedition to the Internet

What exactly is the Internet? Is it a cloud? A network of wires? How does the information travel online? Learn all this and more with Ruby!

In Ruby’s world anything is possible if you put your mind to it―even building the Internet out of snow! But before you can build something, you need to understand what it is and how it works.