SIGCSE 2008 : Portland, OR

Rediscovering the Passion, Beauty, Joy and Awe : Making

Computing Fun Again

2008-03-14 @ 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?

(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 HSWil 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 TheoryGamesCrafters.berkeley.eduGamesCrafters.berkeley.edu Undergradu

ate 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.eduMSDOSX.berkeley.edu

(12/15)Passion, Beauty, Joy, Awe : Ownership & Creativity

2006Fa MS-DOS X students

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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.eduUCBUGG.berkeley.edu

UCBUGG : Pixar “light”

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2006Fa UCBUGGers

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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