A delightful way to teach kids about computers | Linda Liukas | TEDxCERN
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0:20 - 0:23Code is the next universal language.
-
0:24 - 0:28In the seventies, it was punk music
that drove the whole generation. -
0:28 - 0:30In the eighties, it was probably money.
-
0:30 - 0:33But for my generation of people,
-
0:33 - 0:37software is the interface
to our imagination and our world. -
0:38 - 0:40And that means that we need
-
0:40 - 0:43a radically, radically
more diverse set of people -
0:43 - 0:44to build those products,
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0:44 - 0:49to not see computers as mechanical
and lonely and boring and magic, -
0:49 - 0:52to see them as things
that they can tinker -
0:52 - 0:54and turn around and twist,
and so forth. -
0:55 - 0:59My personal journey into the world
of programming and technology -
0:59 - 1:01started at the tender age of 14.
-
1:01 - 1:06I had this mad teenage crush
on an older man, -
1:06 - 1:08and the older man in question
just happened to be -
1:08 - 1:13the then Vice President
of the United States, Mr. Al Gore. -
1:13 - 1:16And I did what every single
teenage girl would want to do. -
1:16 - 1:18I wanted to somehow
express all of this love, -
1:18 - 1:20so I built him a website, it's over here.
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1:20 - 1:24And in 2001, there was no Tumblr,
-
1:25 - 1:27there was no Facebook,
there was no Pinterest. -
1:27 - 1:29So I needed to learn to code
-
1:29 - 1:32in order to express
all of this longing and loving. -
1:33 - 1:35And that is how programming
started for me. -
1:35 - 1:37It started as a means of self-expression.
-
1:37 - 1:41Just like when I was smaller,
I would use crayons and legos. -
1:41 - 1:46And when I was older, I would use
guitar lessons and theater plays. -
1:47 - 1:51But then, there were other boys,
other things to get excited about, -
1:51 - 1:54like poetry and knitting socks
-
1:54 - 1:57and conjugating French irregular verbs
-
1:57 - 2:00and coming up with make-believe worlds
-
2:00 - 2:02and Bertrand Russell and his philosophy.
-
2:02 - 2:04And I started to be one of those people
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2:04 - 2:07who felt that computers
are boring and technical and lonely. -
2:09 - 2:10Here's what I think today.
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2:10 - 2:14Little girls don't know that they
are not supposed to like computers. -
2:14 - 2:16Little girls are amazing.
-
2:16 - 2:20They are really, really good
at concentrating on things -
2:20 - 2:23and being exact and they ask
amazing questions like, -
2:23 - 2:26"What?" and "Why?"
and "How?" and "What if?" -
2:26 - 2:30And they don't know that they
are not supposed to like computers. -
2:30 - 2:32It's the parents who do.
-
2:32 - 2:34It's us parents who feel
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2:34 - 2:39like computer science
is this esoteric, weird science discipline -
2:39 - 2:42that only belongs to the mystery makers.
-
2:42 - 2:45That it's almost as far removed
from everyday life -
2:45 - 2:47as, say, nuclear physics.
-
2:48 - 2:50And they are partly right about that.
-
2:50 - 2:54There's a lot of syntax
and controls and data structures -
2:54 - 2:56and algorithms and practices,
-
2:56 - 2:59protocols and paradigms in programming.
-
2:59 - 3:03And we as a community,
we've made computers smaller and smaller. -
3:03 - 3:08We've built layers and layers
of abstraction on top of each other -
3:08 - 3:09between the man and the machine
-
3:09 - 3:13to the point that we no longer
have any idea how computers work -
3:13 - 3:14or how to talk to them.
-
3:15 - 3:17And we do teach our kids
how the human body works, -
3:17 - 3:21we teach them how
the combustion engine functions -
3:21 - 3:24and we even tell them
that if you want to really be an astronaut -
3:24 - 3:26you can become one.
-
3:26 - 3:27But when the kid comes to us and asks,
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3:27 - 3:31"So, what is a bubble sort algorithm?"
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3:31 - 3:35Or, "How does the computer know
what happens when I press 'play,' -
3:35 - 3:37how does it know which video to show?"
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3:37 - 3:39Or, "Linda, is Internet a place?"
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3:39 - 3:42We adults, we grow oddly silent.
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3:43 - 3:45"It's magic," some of us say.
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3:45 - 3:49'It's too complicated," the others say.
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3:49 - 3:51Well, it's neither.
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3:51 - 3:53It's not magic and it's not complicated.
-
3:53 - 3:57It all just happened
really, really, really fast. -
3:57 - 4:00Computer scientists built
these amazing, beautiful machines, -
4:00 - 4:02but they made them
very, very foreign to us, -
4:02 - 4:05and also the language we speak
to the computers -
4:05 - 4:08so that we don't know
how to speak to the computers anymore -
4:08 - 4:10without our fancy user interfaces.
-
4:10 - 4:12And that's why no one recognized
-
4:12 - 4:14that when I was conjugating
French irregular verbs, -
4:14 - 4:17I was actually practicing
my pattern recognition skills. -
4:17 - 4:20And when I was excited about knitting,
-
4:20 - 4:23I actually was following
a sequence of symbolic commands -
4:23 - 4:25that included loops inside of them.
-
4:25 - 4:28And that Bertrand Russell's lifelong quest
-
4:28 - 4:32to find an exact language
between English and mathematics -
4:32 - 4:35found its home inside of a computer.
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4:35 - 4:37I was a programmer, but no one knew it.
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4:39 - 4:44The kids of today, they tap, swipe
and pinch their way through the world. -
4:44 - 4:47But unless we give them tools
to build with computers, -
4:47 - 4:50we are raising only consumers
instead of creators. -
4:51 - 4:54And I believe that,
if JavaScript is the new lingua franca, -
4:54 - 4:59instead of grammar lessons,
we should be teaching poetry classes. -
4:59 - 5:03This whole quest
led me to this little girl. -
5:03 - 5:05Her name is Ruby, she is six years old.
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5:05 - 5:09She is completely fearless,
imaginative and a little bit bossy. -
5:09 - 5:11And every time
I would run into a problem -
5:11 - 5:13in trying to teach
myself programming like, -
5:13 - 5:17"What is object-oriented design
or what is garbage collection?", -
5:17 - 5:22I would try to imagine how a six-year-old
little girl would explain the problem. -
5:22 - 5:24And I wrote a book about her
and I illustrated it -
5:25 - 5:27and the things
Ruby taught me go like this. -
5:27 - 5:29Ruby taught me that you're
not supposed to be afraid -
5:29 - 5:31of the bugs under your bed.
-
5:32 - 5:34And even the biggest of the problems
-
5:34 - 5:38are a group of tiny problems
stuck together. -
5:38 - 5:40And Ruby also introduced
me to her friends, -
5:41 - 5:45the colorful side of the Internet culture.
-
5:45 - 5:47She has friends like the Snow Leopard,
-
5:47 - 5:50who is beautiful but doesn't want
to play with the other kids. -
5:50 - 5:55And she has friends like the green robots
that are really friendly but super messy. -
5:55 - 5:57And she has friends like Linux the penguin
-
5:57 - 6:01who's really ruthlessly efficient,
but somewhat hard to understand. -
6:01 - 6:03And idealistic foxes, and so on.
-
6:04 - 6:08In Ruby's world, you learn
technology through play. -
6:08 - 6:12And, for instance, computers
are really good at repeating stuff, -
6:12 - 6:14so the way Ruby would teach
loops goes like this. -
6:15 - 6:18This is Ruby's favorite dance move,
it goes, "Clap, clap, stomp, stomp -
6:18 - 6:19clap, clap and jump."
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6:21 - 6:25And you learn counter loops
by repeating that four times. -
6:25 - 6:28And you learn while loops
by repeating that sequence -
6:28 - 6:29while I'm standing on one leg.
-
6:30 - 6:33And you learn until loops
by repeating that sequence -
6:33 - 6:35until mom gets really mad.
-
6:35 - 6:36(Laughter)
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6:36 - 6:40You learn decomposition skills
by problem solving flow charts -
6:40 - 6:43and seeing what went wrong
in Ruby's friends' practicalities. -
6:44 - 6:48You learn that algorithms
are much like cupcake recipes. -
6:48 - 6:52And most of all, you learn
that there are no ready answers. -
6:53 - 6:55When coming up with the curriculum
for Ruby's world, -
6:55 - 6:59I needed to really ask the kids
how they see the world -
6:59 - 7:01and what kind of questions they have
-
7:01 - 7:03and I would organize
play testing sessions. -
7:05 - 7:09I have three little stories for you
from those play testing sessions. -
7:09 - 7:12I would start by showing the kids
these four pictures. -
7:13 - 7:15I would show them a picture of a car,
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7:15 - 7:17a grocery store, a dog and a toilet.
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7:17 - 7:21And I would ask, "Which one of these
do you think is a computer?" -
7:22 - 7:24And the kids would be
very conservative and go, -
7:24 - 7:26"None of these is a computer.
-
7:26 - 7:28I know what a computer is:
-
7:28 - 7:29it's that glowing box
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7:29 - 7:33in front of which mom or dad
spends way too much time." -
7:33 - 7:35But then we would talk
-
7:35 - 7:38and we would discover
that actually, a car is a computer, -
7:38 - 7:40it has a navigation system inside of it.
-
7:40 - 7:43And a dog - a dog
might not be a computer, -
7:43 - 7:44but it has a collar
-
7:44 - 7:47and the collar might have
a computer inside of it. -
7:47 - 7:50And grocery stores, they have
so many different kinds of computers, -
7:50 - 7:54like the cashier system
and the burglar alarms. -
7:54 - 7:55And kids, you know what?
-
7:55 - 7:58In Japan, toilets are computers
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7:58 - 8:00and there's even hackers who hack them.
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8:00 - 8:01(Laughter)
-
8:02 - 8:03And we go further
-
8:03 - 8:06and I give them these little stickers
with an on/off button on them. -
8:06 - 8:10And I tell the kids,
"Today you have this magic ability -
8:10 - 8:14to make anything in this room
into a computer." -
8:14 - 8:15And again, the kids go,
-
8:15 - 8:18"Sounds really hard,
I don't know the right answer for this." -
8:18 - 8:19But I tell them, "Don't worry,
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8:19 - 8:22your parents don't know
the right answer, either. -
8:22 - 8:24They've just started
to hear about this thing -
8:24 - 8:27called The Internet of Things.
-
8:27 - 8:29But you kids,
you are going to be the ones -
8:29 - 8:33who are really going to live up in a world
where everything is a computer." -
8:33 - 8:37Your washing machine, toothbrush,
even your milk bottle. -
8:37 - 8:41And that you're the last generation
that will remember the computer -
8:41 - 8:42as a glowing box.
-
8:43 - 8:45And then I had this little girl
who came to me -
8:45 - 8:46and took a bicycle lamp
-
8:46 - 8:51and she said, "This bicycle lamp,
if it were a computer, -
8:51 - 8:53it would change colors."
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8:53 - 8:56And I said, "That's a really good idea,
what else could it do?" -
8:56 - 8:58And she thinks and she thinks,
-
8:58 - 9:02and she goes, "If this bicycle lamp
were a computer, -
9:02 - 9:04we could go on a biking trip
with my father -
9:04 - 9:06and we would sleep in a tent
-
9:06 - 9:10and this biking lamp
could also be a movie projector." -
9:11 - 9:13And that's the moment I'm looking for,
-
9:14 - 9:17not the moment when the kid writes
the prefect Ruby array, -
9:18 - 9:19the moment when the kid realizes
-
9:19 - 9:21that the world
is definitely not ready yet, -
9:22 - 9:24that a really awesome way
of making the world more ready -
9:24 - 9:27is by building technology
-
9:27 - 9:30and that each one of us
can be a part of that change. -
9:30 - 9:33Final story, we also built a computer,
-
9:33 - 9:36the glowing box,
the archaic glowing box. -
9:36 - 9:41And we got to know the bossy CPU
and the helpful RAM and ROM -
9:41 - 9:42that help it remember things.
-
9:42 - 9:45And after we've assembled
our computer together, -
9:45 - 9:48we also design an application for it.
-
9:48 - 9:50And my favorite story is this little boy,
-
9:50 - 9:51he's six years old
-
9:51 - 9:54and his favorite thing in the world
is to be an astronaut. -
9:55 - 9:57And the boy, he has
these huge headphones on -
9:57 - 10:00and he's completely immersed
in his tiny paper computer -
10:00 - 10:02because you see, he's built his own
-
10:02 - 10:07intergalactic planetary
navigation application. -
10:07 - 10:10And his father, the lone astronaut
in the Martian orbit, -
10:10 - 10:12is on the other side of the room
-
10:12 - 10:13and the boy's important mission
-
10:13 - 10:16is to bring the father
safely back to earth. -
10:17 - 10:21And these kids are going to have
a profoundly different view of the world -
10:21 - 10:23and the way we build it with technology.
-
10:25 - 10:28Finally, the more approachable,
the more inclusive, -
10:28 - 10:32and the more diverse
we make the world of technology, -
10:32 - 10:36the more colorful and better
the world will look like. -
10:37 - 10:40Because disruption
doesn't start with technology. -
10:40 - 10:43Disruption starts
with the people with a vision. -
10:44 - 10:47And computer science, and programming
and technology -
10:47 - 10:50the very DNA of all of these things
is humanity. -
10:50 - 10:53Computers, after all,
they used to be humans -
10:54 - 10:57who were really, really good
at calculating things. -
10:57 - 11:00And still today, programmers
don't write the code -
11:00 - 11:02only for the machine to execute.
-
11:02 - 11:07They write the code for other
programmers to read and build upon. -
11:07 - 11:09So, imagine with me, for a moment,
-
11:09 - 11:12a world where the stories we tell
-
11:12 - 11:15about how things get made
don't only include -
11:15 - 11:17the twentysomething-year-old
Silicon Valley boys, -
11:18 - 11:22but also Kenyan schoolgirls
and Norwegian librarians. -
11:23 - 11:27Imagine a world where
the little Ada Lovelaces of tomorrow, -
11:27 - 11:30who live in a permanent
reality of 1s and 0s, -
11:30 - 11:35they grow up to be very optimistic
and brave about technology. -
11:35 - 11:38They embrace the powers
and the opportunities -
11:38 - 11:40and the limitations of the world.
-
11:41 - 11:45A world of technology
that is wonderful, whimsical -
11:45 - 11:47and a tiny bit weird.
-
11:48 - 11:50When I was a girl,
-
11:50 - 11:52I wanted to be a storyteller.
-
11:52 - 11:54I loved make-believe worlds
-
11:54 - 11:55and my favorite thing to do
-
11:55 - 11:59was to wake up in the mornings
in Moominvalley. -
11:59 - 12:02In the afternoons,
I would roam around the Tatooines. -
12:03 - 12:06And in the evenings,
I would go to sleep in Narnia. -
12:07 - 12:10And programming turned out
to be the perfect profession for me. -
12:11 - 12:13I still create worlds.
-
12:13 - 12:16Instead of stories, I do them with code.
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12:17 - 12:20Programming gives me this amazing power
-
12:20 - 12:22to build my whole little universe
-
12:22 - 12:26with its own rules
and paradigms and practices. -
12:27 - 12:31Create something out of nothing
with the pure power of logic. -
12:33 - 12:35And that probably makes me a poet.
-
12:36 - 12:37Thank you.
-
12:37 - 12:40(Applause)
- Title:
- A delightful way to teach kids about computers | Linda Liukas | TEDxCERN
- Description:
-
Computer code is the next universal language, and its syntax will be limited only by the imaginations of the next generation of programmers. Linda Liukas is helping to educate problem-solving kids, encouraging them to see computers not as mechanical, boring and complicated but as colorful, expressive machines meant to be tinkered with. In this talk, she invites us to imagine a world where the Ada Lovelaces of tomorrow grow up to be optimistic and brave about technology and use it to create a new world that is wonderful, whimsical and a tiny bit weird.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDxTalks
- Duration:
- 12:45
TED Translators admin edited English subtitles for A delightful way to teach kids about computers | Linda Liukas | TEDxCERN | ||
TED Translators admin edited English subtitles for A delightful way to teach kids about computers | Linda Liukas | TEDxCERN | ||
TED Translators admin edited English subtitles for A delightful way to teach kids about computers | Linda Liukas | TEDxCERN | ||
TED Translators admin edited English subtitles for A delightful way to teach kids about computers | Linda Liukas | TEDxCERN | ||
TED Translators admin edited English subtitles for A delightful way to teach kids about computers | Linda Liukas | TEDxCERN | ||
TED Translators admin edited English subtitles for A delightful way to teach kids about computers | Linda Liukas | TEDxCERN | ||
Seoyeong Lee edited English subtitles for A delightful way to teach kids about computers | Linda Liukas | TEDxCERN | ||
Seoyeong Lee edited English subtitles for A delightful way to teach kids about computers | Linda Liukas | TEDxCERN |