Can Computer Coding Be Used to Teach Values? This Scholar Thinks So (Opinion)

In the new ebook Outside of Coding: How Children Study Human Values By means of Programming, Tufts professor Marina Umaschi Bers argues that universities can teach pc coding in techniques that create character as effectively as complex skills. Umaschi Bers, the director of Tuft’s interdisciplinary DevTech Exploration Team, penned the ebook all through the pandemic. She says that the disruptions of COVID-19 had been a stark reminder of how very important it is that technologies be approached with respect for relationship, local community, and generosity.

—Rick

Rick: Your new ebook tackles a subject that may possibly strike some audience as surprising—namely, how children discover values by way of computer system coding. Can you make clear what you have in brain?

Marina: Any time we have interaction in an exercise, we are expressing our values. We do this knowingly or unknowingly. The exercise of coding is not different. In the guide, I suggest 10 diverse values—such as persistence, curiosity, and generosity—that participate in out while mastering how to application assignments that are personally significant to the coder. I use the metaphor of a “palette of virtues” to describe these values. The palette of virtues, a lot like the painter’s palette, is dynamic and can modify according to context and intention. For instance, by participating young children in a team coding surroundings, it invitations them to be generous with just about every other by sharing technical know-how and difficulty solving alongside one another, or when things in the code do not function, it creates alternatives to find out to be individual and to persevere. Understanding how to code, in which trouble resolving is at the center of the activity, presents a excellent chance to investigate moral and personal values, considering the fact that there are not only cognitive dimensions, but also social and psychological elements.

Rick: How did you occur to this as a focal point in your function?

Marina: My doctoral thesis, back again in 2001 at the MIT Media Lab, was previously concentrated on how new systems could enable little ones take a look at and express personal and ethical values. I produced Zora, a three-dimensional digital town for children to style figures and then notify stories to individuals figures. These stories and interactions had been guided by own and moral values. In excess of time, I realized that it is not only by way of a specifically developed tech atmosphere, such as Zora, that we can take a look at values in an intentional and purposeful way, but we can also have this form of exploration extra typically, as a result of the activity of generating with, and by, technologies.

Rick: In the e book, you draw a direct website link involving programming and ethical expansion. Can you say a little bit about this connection?

Marina: It all goes again to intentionality. What is the intention of a teacher who provides robotics to her kindergarten students? Is it only to instruct technical techniques so little ones expand up to grow to be engineers? Or is it also to have interaction them in creating social capabilities, optimistic attitudes, and to support their psychological progress? The coding “playground,” as I get in touch with this studying natural environment, gives amazing chances for equally. For instance, little ones find out how to invent new games and regard rules, how to solve social conflicts, and how to keep seeking when matters do not perform out. At the similar time, it also engages small children in computational wondering, difficulty fixing, engineering, and programming.

Rick: You’ve prepared earlier about the change in between contemplating about artistic “playgrounds” versus restricted “playpens” when it arrives to studying. In this reserve, you propose that coding can be a dynamic playground. What do you imply by this?

Marina: Playgrounds invite fantasy participate in and have to have conflict resolution with minor grownup supervision. In distinction to playgrounds, playpens express a lack of liberty to experiment, lack of autonomy for exploration, absence of imaginative possibilities, and lack of having threats. Playpens are confined limited spaces with couple solutions for youngsters to make their very own options. Despite the fact that playpens are safer, playgrounds deliver infinite prospects for development and learning. In the playground, the boy or girl learns about the social earth by negotiating for their preferred toys in the sandbox, about their possess emotions when they struggle to retain up with other people on the monkey bars, and about moral options and repercussions when they are faced with the problem to wait politely for their change on the swing or to lower the line. In the playground, the kid is encountering the many dimensions of human advancement. On the other hand, she is accomplishing it in a safe and sound space, a area the place she can make issues and attempt once again. Programming languages, these kinds of as KIBO and ScratchJr, are coding playgrounds in which young children have liberty to develop tasks to categorical their considering and to communicate who they are and what they adore. For example, they can make an interactive birthday card for mother or dad with ScratchJr or system a KIBO robot to dance the salsa.

Rick: You advise that it is helpful to imagine about coding as if learners are learning a next language. What does this signify for how we feel about and instruct laptop expertise?

Marina: I propose that finding out computer system programming lets children to attain an option kind of literacy that is crucial in the 21st century. Having said that, my rationale for supporting the introduction of laptop science and computational wondering beginning in kindergarten is not the generation of the long term workforce but the upcoming citizenry. Most persons know that looking at and producing are equipment for interpretation and have the opportunity to be instruments of electric power. Echoing Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, literacy is a software for critical comprehension, for comprehending the globe, and for actively transforming it. This is the very same with coding. Without having being familiar with the fundamentals of what an algorithm is and how it performs, people may possibly not recognize why and how selected facts is shown and turn into illiterate in the data age when so a lot of what we take in is managed by algorithms.

Rick: In 2019, you launched the Outside of STEM software, functioning with kindergarten academics and faculty directors in Boston and Buenos Aires. Can you say a bit about that function and what is ahead for it?

Marina: As a result of this venture, we introduced KIBO robots, an age-proper robot that can be programmed with wood blocks as an alternative of screens, to kindergartners and their academics in religious and secular schools, in Buenos Aires and Boston. Alongside one another, we explored queries this sort of as how can we teach human values as a result of computer system programming that depict each universal and certain views? Can coding support character enhancement? How does a robotics-based program not only encourage the acquisition of technological abilities but also support little ones turn into greater citizens and human beings? Can coding serve as a bridge by furnishing an additional language to get to know other people who are distinct from us? Lecturers attending the robotics instruction came with different degrees of KIBO knowledge, but they all left with technological expertise and a palette of virtues that allowed them to provide robotics classes to their early-childhood lecture rooms. Just about every faculty labored to produce a story utilizing KIBO robots that would emphasize the values of their school and shared the robots with the other collaborating educational institutions in their space and also with their intercontinental counterparts through a virtual portal. In the foreseeable future, we hope to keep on this work by furnishing more opportunities—face-to-encounter workshops and virtual interactions—for persons from distinct cultures and ethnicities, religions and international locations, and who communicate unique languages to get to know every single other by partaking in the shared, universal language of coding.

Rick: Okay, final thought. If you experienced a single piece of suggestions for educators and mother and father hoping to support kids have interaction with engineering in a generous, moral manner, what would it be?

Marina: My guidance is to seem at your possess palette of virtues initial and ask oneself these really hard questions: Are your very own values exercised or displayed in your use of technology? Are you constant in what you believe that is good and bad in your very own behaviors? For most of us, the response is commonly “no.” For instance, we care about household time, but our cellular phone sits with us for the duration of meals. We extremely price confidentiality, but we ahead e-mail. Our little ones are consistently observing us, so before we fear about them, we need to glimpse at our possess behaviors. For the reason that like it or not, we are position products. And we need to be intentional about what variety of modeling we are accomplishing.

This job interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.