Tell us about a time you fell in love… with an academic concept. What excited you about this idea, project, or lesson?
I have found excitement and love for Computer Science this year. CS is uniquely hands-on and highly conceptual and logical at the same time. The ability to create a program with my computer and see it run just from a few commands mesmerized me from the first day of Karel. CS projects force me to look for the simplest yet most creative and logical ways of accomplishing the tasks. For the first major project to build a brick-breaker program, I was drawn into coding intensely right away. Within a week, I had built a fully-functioning Monty Python brick-breaking game, with graphics and sounds, ranging from “Ni!” to “ ’Tis but a scratch” .wav files that I found online! Ever since I started to code this semester, I began to view everyday programs differently. Even when I casually play Candy Crush on my phone, I ponder the complexity of the randomness that needs to occur in the 2D Array along with cascading “if” and “else if” statements.
One day, my CS teacher introduced us to Professor Resnick’s work at MIT Media Lab. Resnick pioneered in CS education for young children to promote creative and computational thinking. I also came across a TED talk by Conrad Wolfram, a British technologist, who advocates a new approach in math education, using computers. Wolfram asserts that computers should do the calculation and kids should be taught mathematical concepts and steps to solve real world problems. Combined with my passion for CS, I truly love this idea of transforming math education with technology, as in Resnick’s work, because I can see how math can be a lot more fun for many more kids. I am very eager to learn more in the CS field and possibly be part of transforming future math education with technology.