I fell in love the moment my dad brought our first clunky computer home.

Like many other children who grew up in the 1990s, I grew up using computers to write stories and explore the Internet. The term “computer science” conjured a dark cloak of mystery, with a hoodie, or a pair of dungarees.  Yet I fell in love with computers and the possibilities that I began to see.

Today, I write picture books about technology to make the world of computers more understandable, inviting, and whimsical for children. The Hello Ruby series has been translated into 28 languages, and some of most enthusiastic readers are primary school teachers. For the past five years, I’ve been traveling around the world and working with teachers from Melbourne to Tokyo, from New York to Tbilisi, helping them see the world of computer science the way I see it: as something beautiful, lovable, and playful.

My most recent project is called Love Letters for Computers, funded by a grant from Dubai World Expo Live. It is a free, 10-part YouTube series intended for primary school educators, covering the basics of computer science with accompanying classroom materials. I wanted to remind teachers how much technology can be about passion, people, and their big ideas. And I wanted everything to look and feel like you‘ve just fallen into a Wes Anderson or Sophia Coppola film.

The videos cover things like hardware, I/O systems, networks, machine learning, as well as diversity & equity. The website includes 28 classroom worksheets, a teacher journal with prompts to reflect upon learning, and other resources to support professional development.

So what did I learn while making this series?

Here are three key takeaways from the Love Letters series:

1. Computer science goes beyond coding.

Teaching computer science in primary school is not just about coding. It’s about helping children develop a love of learning and sharing widely-applicable, long-term ideas. A way of thinking that provides a new perspective to the world. And that’s what computer science does.

We shouldn’t teach computer science just because it’s useful, but because it’s interesting and intensely creative. Computer science blends the intellectual pleasure of reason and logic with the practicality of engineering. It blends the beauty of arts with the change-the-world ethos of social sciences.

The big luminaries of computing like Claude Shannon and Ada Lovelace blended together philosophy, math, and crafts to create modern computers. For the future of computing, we need students to combine their interest in human brains, oboe playing, or nature with computer science to take the field, as well as the world, forward.

And teachers play a huge role in shaping children’s ideas about computer science.

With this series, I hope more teachers start to think about computer science as another tool they can use to express their ideas, just like crayons, posters, or play-doh.

2. Imagination does not oppose science.

I wonder, I wonder, I wonder – what would it feel like to fall inside a computer? What does the Internet look like? Could you teach binary systems with candies?

A lot of the time computer science content is very dull and abstract, especially for young children. Sometimes it can seem as though a teacher’s job is to give out information and then have students repeat it through tests and written text.

How can we better help children find meaning in what they learn and understand the technology they encounter and experience?

With the activities designed for Love Letters, I wanted to create a curiosity cabinet that children could use as points of reference, not as rote techniques.

In early childhood, we use real materials to make connections and build bridges; we create our own renderings and responses to what we experience in the world. That’s why many of the activities invite young students to draw, build, imagine, and interview—mostly without screens. A child’s capacity to construct theories, create meaningful projects, and explore open-ended questions rarely gets used in computer science. Love Letters is more about making memories than transferring knowledge.

3. Teachers deserve hands-on, beautiful, well-thought materials and time for reflection.

Along with the videos and classroom materials, I also designed a reflection journal for teachers. The idea was to help support teachers as learners and as active shapers of the material.

One of the things I’m most excited about right now is starting to see glimpses of love letters in the real world, like these “I wonder” statements from a Dutch teacher, this Norwegian teacher who created an interactive version of one the, and these Singaporean girls imagining what computer scientists look like.

I hope teachers will work as researchers, engage in discussions and interpretation of their own work and the work of their students, documenting the children’s learning process and representations of their thinking around computer science in many media—and sharing them with the world.

So that we can all recognize that it’s not just a computer.

It’s a magic wand.

It’s a guitar.
It’s a telescope.
It’s a treasure finder.

And anything else a child can imagine. ?

• Check out the classroom materials and journal
• Subscribe to the YouTube channel

 

Linda Liukas is an author, illustrator, mediocre programmer and show runner who is equally inspired by Joan Ganz Cooney, Björk and Seymour Papert.

When Sesame Street first went on the air in 1969, it was part of a movement to help public media reshape what then-FCC Chairman Newton Minow called “the vast wasteland” of programming. Today, more children have access to their own smartphones and tablets than ever before, and almost any kind of content they might want to watch is just a search bar and a click away. What are some of the lessons that we can learn from public media’s successes in reaching diverse audiences—and can public media keep up with this rapidly evolving landscape to keep young people engaged?

On October 21, 2019, Michael Preston joined Milton Chen (George Lucas Educational Foundation) and Debra Sanchez (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) at the annual CSforALL Summit in Salt Lake City for a fireside chat, “Leveraging Public Media to Inspire All Kids to See Themselves in Tech.” Together, they discussed the history of public media’s commitment to helping children learn through high-quality educational television, including Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, and its role in shaping engaged citizens who will help build a brighter future. 

Debra Sanchez pointed out that one of public media’s strengths is that its producers have always known that designing great content is critical. Thoughtfully-designed characters and content can help to introduce concepts that might be challenging and hold a child’s hand throughout the learning experience. Michael Preston agreed, noting that Sesame Street has always made great efforts to portray diversity, featuring characters—humans and Muppets—of all backgrounds, including racial, socioeconomic, and gender. (Designers and producers may be interested in Designing for Diverse Families, which features case studies and a research-based design guide on creating media for diverse audiences.)

Public media producers also strive to engage family members to participate in a child’s learning. From the very beginning, Sesame Street was designed to appeal to parents as well as children, and continues to engage caring adults as partners in children’s learning and entertainment. Today, public media stations are building unique partnerships within their local communities that create opportunities for families to participate in learning activities together such as family creative learning workshops with Scratch. In Los Angeles, for example, PBS SoCal has been working with partners at USC Viterbi School of Engineering to design “playshops” that encourage families to learn about coding and robotics, and producers at WGBH are creating adult education programs and multimedia resources to empower parents to explore STEM learning together.

Milton Chen noted that the US has invented new technologies that transformed the media landscape, but that we have also seen a rapid commercialization of these technologies. The original mandate of public media was to provide access to education content to all Americans for free. Is it still the best hope? How can public media help create a brighter future for all kids?

Both Preston and Sanchez agreed that the need for high-quality public media is as important today as ever, perhaps because of the highly volatile nature of the media landscape competing for our attention.

“It’s an age of information overload,” said Michael Preston. “Our brains can’t always distinguish sources that are credible or not.” And while we have, in many ways, benefited from the platforms that broaden participation, he continued, “There are risks too, in the tension between formal journalism and the social internet, and the risk of misinformation.” Is the commercial internet adequate for our civil discourse? What role might public media play? Is it possible to establish independent, non-commercial ways to support access to information, free speech, and dialogue in service of the public good, the equivalent of the public spaces and infrastructure that we rely on every day?

In many ways, said Debra Sanchez, we’re grappling with the same issues that Joan Ganz Cooney and Fred Rogers faced more than 50 years ago. They knew that television could be used to reach, and teach, underserved children. Today, children are almost overserved with media choices in what Minow might call a modern “wasteland” that still leaves children underserved with high-quality learning opportunities. 

As we look toward the future, public media aims to leverage its strength as a source of trusted content by meeting audiences where they are: learning more about people within their communities, and reaching them via the platforms that they are using.