» Friday, 6 July A.D. 2007
exploratory computing for children
Jacob recently asked about resources for elementary computer education. In the comments to that post, he reveals that they have SimCity 2000, but he believes it to be “a little over [my son's] level.” In the very next comment, ångel notes that they have purchased Zoo Tycoon for their sons and they love clicking around and playing with things for sheer enjoyment.
I've thought about how to introduce young children to computers, mostly in the context of teaching programming skills. I have come up with virtually nothing, but the literature I have read on the subject suggests that more exploratory, open-ended environments are the best thing to give to children. With a little bit of direction, children come up with marvelous things.
The best example I've read concerning this was a story from Exploring Mathematics with Mathematica, or something like that. One chapter talks about how to teach young (5-10 years) children advanced mathematical concepts (high-school algebra and beyond). As an example of how to do something so audacious, the authors share their experiences running a math-oriented summer day camp for children with Mathematica as one of their primary teaching tools.
Said chapter contains a five or six page transcript from a child's interactive session during the camp. The start of it is really nothing complicated, just the child typing a single letter into the prompt and--since Mathematica is a great environment for symbolic computing--Mathematica printing out the child's entry. But then the child starts typing things like 'a+a' in, and Mathematica starts simplifying to '2a'. You can literally see the wheels in the child's head turning as variations on this theme--what's 'a+a+a+a+a'?--are explored. The child experiments with multiplication, changing the letter in question, using multiple letters, and then gets good enough to start guessing what the answer is--'a+a+a+a=4a'--and so forth. After a week or two, if I remember correctly, the child was expanding polynomials and correctly guessing the answers to boot. Very cool.
This example and others that I have read makes me think SimCity would be a fine thing to hand to a younger child. After a few minutes of explanation, I bet most children would have great fun plopping buildings down, bulldozing trees and lakes, building loopy interconnected roads, and so forth. It's not Mathematica, but's it's a solid exploratory environment; I think Will Wright would agree. (And he may have already have in some interview from times past.) Sure, I might play SimCity trying to build the biggest city, but the little child doesn't have to know anything about that particular goal--he or she can make up wildly different goals as they go along.
I try to think about this stuff as I play with Becca, too. She received a set of puzzles for her birthday, simple puzzles with a border and five to seven chunky pieces max. Over the past couple days, she has become enthusiastic about asking up to “play puzzles” with her. Of course, it's no fun for me to put in the pieces every time, so I've been attempting to explain to her how she can figure out where the pieces go--colors along the edges, bumps matching on pieces, etc. She's been getting better; there are several pieces in most puzzles that are “hers” and that she gets to put in every time.
Obviously, the end goal in this is for Becca to be able to do those puzzles all by herself and eventually figure out what to do with new puzzles she's never seen before. The end goal in teaching children about computing is not too much different, except it has the added twist of helping the child understand that the computer can be an incredible tool for exploring things--you're not fixed in this framework that the puzzle manufacturer made up for you. There are certain “rote” sort of skills that you want to teach along the way--typing, for instance--but aiming at a more exploratory approach is the richest thing you can do with the computer, I think.
posted by Nate @ 7:06PM