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