October 31, 2010
October 17, 2010
TEDx San Antonio2010
There were a number of very interesting presentations at TEDx San Antonio here at Trinity yesterday. Trinity Prof. of Communications Aaron Delwiche focused on what he sees is the importance of everyone, not just geeks, being computer programmers. He proposes that people mystify technology, and "experts" tell the public that we do not have to think about how computers work. He contends that it is scary to let someone else think for you and that we can all understand and program our own systems. As examples, he discussed Scratch, a programming language for kids developed at MIT and Google's creation of a programming language for the Android phone.
I have seen Scratch being used by 4th & 5th graders (they love to make their own animations, etc.), but I'm not sure I agree with Delwiche's conviction that "we can and must all program our own computers," unless the definition of programming is extended to include the interactive web2.0 tools that you all experimented with last week. Perhaps that's it; we all can and must contribute to the vast stores of information being added to the the internet on a daily basis. What do you think? Do you want to program and control your computer?
I have seen Scratch being used by 4th & 5th graders (they love to make their own animations, etc.), but I'm not sure I agree with Delwiche's conviction that "we can and must all program our own computers," unless the definition of programming is extended to include the interactive web2.0 tools that you all experimented with last week. Perhaps that's it; we all can and must contribute to the vast stores of information being added to the the internet on a daily basis. What do you think? Do you want to program and control your computer?
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