#mitch resnick

[onlynina]

I doodled and filmed a video about tinkering in an educational context, based on writing by Sherry Turkle, Mitch Resnick, and San Francisco's Exploratorium. The video was produced for "Designing for Learning by Creating," a Harvard course taught by Professor Karen Brennan. (It's truly the highlight of my week, and having the video picked up by MIT's Scratch team made me smile so hard.)

[rayferaday]

Coding to Learn

The movement to teach kids coding may have been born of nostalgia for the wide open days of hacking in the 70s and 80s, or of a business agenda and fear of technological obsolescence in the 21st century, but there are also solid pedagogical reasons for it. The TCDSB 21st Century Learning & AICT group has identified 6 Competencies for 21st Century Learning: Communication, Collaboration, Self-Regulation, Knowledge Construction, Creative Problem Solving & Innovation, and Use of ICT for Learning. These skills are familiar to me as a Spec. Ed. Teacher teaching students with special needs, including students on the Autism Spectrum, many of whom are non-verbal. These are the skills that Psychologists, Speech and Language Pathologists, and other professionals typically identify as the key foci for academic programming for these students. In his TED Talk, Mitch Resnick from MIT, one of the developers of the Scratch modular programming language, has identified similar skills that children learn from coding. They learn in a meaningful context and come to realize learning is a process and not a product. They learn to break complex ideas or problems into simpler parts, to collaborate, to keep persistent and persevere in the face of difficulty. Becoming fluent with technologies allows them to open up and express themselves, to be creative and to interact with the world around them. Resnick and the MIT team's goal is not so much to have the kids learn to code as it is to USE CODING TO LEARN. Learning to code is seen as an essential 21st century literacy around the world. See: "Year of Code" in Britain, "Hour of Code" in the United States, and others. The Scratch programming language, as well as similar block programming platforms, take away the tedious concerns about programming syntax and allow the student to focus on using the computer to express themselves. New iterations of Scratch (Scratch Jr.) get away from using text altogether and just use the block symbols to communicate with the computer. I can't help drawing comparisons to the communication symbols that many non-verbal students use to augment their communication.

[paranoiasnfm]

TED Talk

TED

Young people today have lots of experience … interacting with new technologies, but a lot less so of creating [or] expressing themselves with new technologies. It’s almost as if they can read but not write.”

Mitch Resnick

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[mradachi-blog]

Mitch Resnick: Let's teach kids to code - Coding isn't just for computer whizzes, says Mitch Resnick of MIT Media Lab -- it's for everyone. In a fun, demo-filled talk Resnick outlines the benefits of teaching kids to code, so they can do more than just "read" new technologies -- but also create them.

[tedxbeaconstreet]

Reading, Writing, and Programming: Mitch Resnick at TEDxBeaconStreet

Most people view computer coding as a narrow technical skill. Not Mitch Resnick. He argues that the ability to code, like the ability to read and write, is becoming essential for full participation in today’s society. And he demonstrates how Scratch programming software from the MIT Media Lab makes coding accessible and appealing to everyone — from elementary-school children to his 83-year-old mom. 

[redstripe118]

When I was a kid, do you know what kinds of video games I absolutely loved? Those that had level editors. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater skatepark editors, racing game racetrack creators (eg Re-Volt), the StarCraft campaign editor--I was a total FIEND for that kind of stuff. Hell, I recall making the switch from StarCraft 64 to the original PC version SOLELY BECAUSE I found out it had a campaign editor, being all like "Wait, I can make my own StarCraft missions?? OH YEAH I WANT THAT!!"

And that brings us to this TEDx talk from Mitch Resnick: "Let's teach kids how to code." First off, AMEN to that concept alone, and he spells out many excellent reasons why. But even better, he shows off this MIT-developed web tool called Scratch, which is pretty much a way to create Adobe flash-esque animations and games. But it also works coding concepts into the editor, via dragging and dropping blocks that contain commands.

In other words: Scratch might as well be one of those level editors FOR PROGRAMMING. That is just the coolest thing!!! If I were a kid once again, THIS would have been something I'd absolutely, positively swear by. And who knows, maybe I would have been learning some legit programming years earlier than when I actually started.