Teaching computer coding and its impact on Humanities

1. The world movement of teaching
computer coding and its impact on
humanities
Mokhtar BEN HENDA
Bordeaux Montaigne University
Ocotber 2019

2. Debate
One long debate for Humanities is “the value
of teaching programming skills in humanities
courses”
Main argument in favor :
–21st century humanists need skills to control growing
amounts of (digital) data.
Main arguments against:
–it’s too technical as skill for humanities
–Coding should start very early

3. The code in the humanities
Fight against popular
ideas such as:
Digital (computer) is the
prerogative of hard sciences
and techniques (STEM);
Uses are for the humanities,
the design is for hard
sciences and techniques!
Humanities are the weak tier
of sciences (underground
level)! https://aryaboudaie.com/technical/educational/humanities/2018/10/30/humanities-for-cs.html

4. Main challenges
 Humanities scholars and teachers
need learn computational methods
and algorithmic thinking
 More widespread understanding of
the importance of these methods for
the humanities
 However, the adoption rate of
computational skills by humanities
scholars is still low in practice
 Teaching all humanities students
basic computational literacy starts at
undergraduate level
A worldwie movement for coding

5. The Hour of Code
 A one hour introduction to
computer science:
 no experience needed
 Can run on browsers, tablets,
and smartphones
 Takes place every year
during Computer Science
Education Week, the first
week in December
 A coding challenge to give
students a fun first
introduction to computer
science and has become a
global learning event

7. Code Week
 A worldwide grass-roots
movement to celebrate
creativity, problem-
solving and collaboration
through programming
and other tech activities
 To make programming more
visible,
 To show young, adults and
elderly how to bring ideas to
life with code,
 To demystify IT skills and
bring motivated people
together to learn

8. 1.5
million
youth
Are you
ready
for october
2019?
To accommodate the various school
calendars, each country gets to decide
the specific 1 or 2 week timeframe for
Africa Code Week to take place for
their students in October 2019.

9. Political and technical endorsement

10. Economic incentives
Payne, B. (2015). Teach Your Kids to Code: A
Parent-Friendly Guide to Python Programming.
No Starch Press.

11. 500,000 current
openings:
These jobs are in
every industry and
every state, and
they’re projected to
grow at twice the rate
of all other jobs.
Computing jobs are the #1 source
of new wages in the United States

12. The code at the core of Cognitive sciences
Abstraction / Convention / Representation
 Abstraction is cultural: a cognitive process
 Coding needs training like any language
 Computer codes are signs in natural language
 They are less abstract than ideograms or sign

13. The K12 system

14. DecompositionABSTRACTIONPattern
recognition
ALGORITHM
DESIGN
Breaking big problems into
smaller ones that are
much easier to manage.
Remove parts of a problem
that are unnecessary and
make one solution work for
multiple problems.
Analyze & look for a
repeating sequence.
Step-by-step
instructions on how
to do something.

15. It is a pedagogy first!
 Constructivism (Piaget) :
 all knowledge is the result of an
individual learning experience, using
concepts of assimilation and
accommodation;
 Socioconstructivism (Vygotsky) :
 The construction of a knowledge is
personal but takes place in a social
context (what the others bring as
interactions),

16. Once upon a time in the 60s
 The logo languageof Seymour
Papert (1967)
 « The programming child »
 Meeting between the cognitivism
current in artificial intelligence
and the constructivism of Piaget
In Papert main educational application, the
Logo language allows, by entering series of
instructions, to move a small turtle - stylized in
a triangle - to draw geometric shapes, as if they
are drawn and shaped on paper.

17. Today, Scratch a success
story
 A very powerful programming
language developed by the
MIT Media Lab to simplify the way of
coding for the young generation.
 Based on a block-building approach, it uses a
simple structure of visual bricks or blocks of
computer code that snap and interlock together.
 Fosters team work and communications by
allowing students to create, share and download
projects.
 It's less about teaching programming languages
than about the programming logic.
 Especially for kids, this teaching can go through
tools that simplify the code, like Scratch
 Children handle blocks of code ready to achieve
their ends. It can also involve learning algorithms To download at : https://scratch.mit.edu/download

18. Zero code before the code !
Logic thinking (needed for code) can
help children succeed in other day-
to-day activities and at school
 Hoscoth
 Tynker
 Move the turtle
 Alice…

19. Codecademy

20. https://csfirst.withgoogle.com/c/cs-first/en/curriculum.html
Explore this link for
news ways to apply
computational
thinking to real-life
problem solving:

21. Best Places to Learn to Code For Free
 Codeacademy. http://www.codecademy.com/
 Courserahttps://www.coursera.org/courses?query=coding&
 edX. https://www.edx.org/
 Udemyhttps://www.udemy.com/
 AGupieWarehttp://blog.agupieware.com/2014/05/online-learning-
bachelors-level.html
 GitHubhttps://github.com/vhf/free-programming-
books/blob/master/free-programming-books.md#professional-development
 MIT Open Courseware
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-
00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/
 Hack.pledgehttp://hackpledge.org/
 Codeavengerhttps://www.codeavengers.com/
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/250323

22. Be produtive in humanities without coding
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