2023-05-07 thoughts - revised
June 7, 2023 - So what do I think we were doing back there?
Possibly we were simply doing what everyone was doing, teaching computer literacy. We had ideas about that including that it meant knowing how to USE a computer and that had advanced from having to learn BASIC, as many had done, to a more sophisticated programming language. So why be computer literate? What was it and what would a literate person do?
We certainly distinguished it from learning to use a productivity program like MS Word, or a spreadsheet. Those were, perhaps, basic skills but not literacy - literacy seems to have meant something about using the computer to express oneself - but in a procedural way rather than a descriptive way. In the UK, AI was big and Mike Sharples was leading the idea that kids needed to learn ‘literacy’ by becoming adept at Prolog. Same same?
There was an aesthetic that was compelling to some and then lots of other things on the side.
At the Asilimar meeting we saw people using different forms of expression - computer assisted - ie the modern version of maths but in different languages - prolog, logo, cabri, etc…
So let’s forget Logo and Lego for now - perhaps taking up the modern equivalents so what we did is located in history as just an early step in what we are still doing.
Where this goes is to raise a question about AI - we identified what microworlds could do for human thinking
And we were interested in what could be expressed by a literate user…to what advantage…
What is computer literacy today?
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Towards a description of the Sunrise Collection
The Sunrise Collection comes from a period in which computer literacy was first pursued as a response to the availability of personal computers. For most people, a personal computer was one they, rather than their employer, owned.
For two years, students from a major secondary school in Melbourne attended two sessions a week in the then Museum of Victoria. Generally in pairs, they used a programming language mostly to create screen objects and to control Lego robots,
Proponents of programming skills for young people considered computer literacy to include understanding of the use of computer programs to go beyond the obvious skills involved in the use of what might be called productivity tools. For students, this approach was being explored to see how individuals could express their understandings in a procedural language to learn about them. For teachers the challenge was to create what were called microwords, computational environments that, when explored, exposed understandings in a way that enabled their author to work on them.
Determining the role of computer science, possibly alongside mathematics, physics, and other sciences, was at an early stage in the wider community. The research has been described as pioneering research, exploratory.
At the same time, the world was opening up to more educational views, perhaps because of or despite the imminent step into personal computing. These were enabled by developments in the US and UK, from where the first personal computers came. People were moving towards a knowledge system identified as constructivism, to opportunities enabled by artificial intelligence, and many were questioning the established view of Piaget's contribution to humans' learning and therefore teaching practices.
Australians were quick to engage with these changes, led in particular by Scott Brownell and Tony Adams, and the clusters of educators who gathered around them and their ideas. Overseas travel brought both the UK and US's model of use of computers in schools to Australia. The technology being used in the UK and US was not the same, the availability of software was only beginning and while one country could offer children databases, the other offered them word processing, for instance. The goals seemed to be the same - better learning - but the tools differed in significant ways.
The Sunrise models, starting in 1980 and continually developed for decades, borrowed heavily from the Microcomputer Education Programme (MEP) of the UK government and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's model led from the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the 1980's. Frequent interactions between those exploring the new possibilities included visits to the US, UK, Canada and particularly the work of the UK Open University's Centre for Mathematics Education (led by Dr John Mason) and the Institute of Education's Logo group (led by Dr Celia Hoyles and Richard Noss). Andrea diSessa (who moved from MIT to Berkeley), Brian Harvey, and others continued to be significant influencers.
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References - the many terms that might have connections!
Sunrise Collection
computer literacy
personal computers
programming language
screen objects
controlled Lego robots
programming skills
productivity tools
approach being explored
procedural language
microwords
computational environments
computer science
pioneering research
educational views
tech in the US
tech in the UK
constructivism
Piaget
Scott Brownell
Tony Adams
the clusters of educators
overseas travel
UK model of use of computers in schools
US model of use of computers in schools
availability of software
databases
word processing
Microcomputer Education Programme (MEP) of the UK government
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Canada (Bill Higginson, Sandy Dawson, Brian Silverman, ...)
UK Open University's Centre for Mathematics Education (Led by Dr John Mason)
Institute of Education's Logo group (led by Dr Celia Hoyles and Richard Noss)
Andrea diSessa (who moved from MIT to Berkeley)
Brian Harvey