Computer Science in the World

I leave tomorrow for Petersburg, Va - the home of Virginia State University and the hosts of a Kids Technical University. Preparing for this talk brought me back to a question that I've thought a lot about over the last several years - kids don't necessarily view Looking Glass and similar programming tools as in any way related to computer science. We can tell them, but unless we can help them see a connection saying "This is Computer Science" is pretty empty.

I've chosen to organize my talk around building a simple virtual pet. Yash is a baby yeti who likes dancing and eating mushrooms. Creating Yash is basically an extended example of use an if statement to trigger a behavior. In addition to constructing Yash, the talk introduces some other examples of this in the world - to decide when to set off an alarm clock, trigger a door to open, etc. My hope is that by focusing on one style of program, albeit simple that kids will be able to identify other examples of it that they encounter in the world. In the wildly successful case, it becomes a tool for seeing just how many different places that computing touches their lives.

We shall see. In the meantime, I too am a fan of the baby yeti.