ABSTRACT: In this talk, I will discuss about a subject that really matters to me: teaching and learning. While I do most of my teaching inside the formal context of the university, as a professor, I am more and more interested in promoting education outside the classroom, in informal contexts, by involving the most diverse people as tutors and mentors. I will focus on computer science, coding and computational thinking, because I strongly believe they provide students with a creative form of expression that can have a profound impact on the way they learn. BIO: Alberto Montresor is professor of Computer Science at the University of Trento, co-founder and BDFL of Coderdojo Verona. Passionate about algorithms and education, he takes pleasure in watching people who study and learn, for example by peeking through the windows of Povo's library.

1. Teaching (coding)
for good
Alberto Montresor

2. This is the story of a
journey….

3. Coderdojo Verona, May 2014

4. Coderdojo Verona, ’19-‘20

5. Coderdojo Verona, 2019

6. Coderdojo Verona, 2019

7. Kids have fun

10. Kids have hard fun

18. How many years have
you spent in school?

19. Was it worth it?

20. What have you learned?
How have you learned?

21. Seymour Papert
• Mathematician, computer scientist,
and educator
• Co-founded the MIT Media Lab
• Worked with Piaget
• Proposed Constructionism
• Invented LOGO
• Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and
Powerful Ideas Harvester Press, 1980

22. Gears of my (his) childhood
42042
2x
2x

23. Gears of my childhood

24. Gears of my childhood

25. School gave me new tools
- Sums
- Products
I
2
4
8
16
32
64
I 28
256
512
1024
2048
4096
8192
16384
32768
65536
131072
262444
524288
1048576
It
2 1
1613216ft
I 28 1
256 1
512 1
1024120481409618192116384132768165536
1
1310721262144152428811048576
2.097.151
I
y
65536
2
131072
My gears -
Numbers!

26. A kid with a VIC-20
• Commodore VIC 20: 8-bit, 1 Mhz, 3.5 KB of RAM
• I was using “base 100”
• Two decimal digits were stored in each byte
• So you could double it inside a byte, and generate a carry-over

27. More school later
T(n) =
⇢
⇢
⇢
⇢
⇢⇢
n
log n 1X
j=0
2j
n ·
2log n 1
2 1
+ 4log n
Serie geometrica finita:
8x 6= 1 :
kX
j=0
xj
=
xk+1 1
x 1
)
63X
j=0
2j
=
263+1 1
2 1
= 264
1
Alberto Montresor (UniTN) ASD - Analisi di algoritmi 2019/09/14 32 / 70

28. My algorithm was right!

29. What are the gears
of your childhood?
What is your passion?

30. Take-home lessons
True learning happens when
you learn for yourself
when you fall in love with the
subject that you are learning

31. Unstructured learning

36. Do you (still) play?

37. Ludimus

38. Take-home lessons
True learning happens when
you play
when you experiment, take risks,
test the boundaries, and iteratively
adapt when things go wrong

39. Samba schools (clubs)
Papert mentions
samba schools at
the end of Mindstorms

44. Are you part of a
learning community
of peers?

45. Speck & Tech

46. Take-home lessons
True learning happens when
you can share what you have
learned

47. Mitch Resnick
• Professor @ MIT Media Lab
• Creator of Scratch
• Passion
• Play
• Peer
• Projects

48. Coolest Project @ Verona

49. Coolest Projects @ Dublin

50. Mitch Resnick

51. The journey
continues…

52. What about the university?
The eternal struggle
between formal and
informal teaching
Varie ed eventuali
Opportunità
ACM-ICPC
Google Summer of Code
Google HashCode
Hackathon(s)
Speck&Tech
Facoltiadi
Coderdojo
Olimpiadi
dell’Informatica
Alberto Montresor (UniTN) ASD - Intro

53. Hash Code 2018

54. Hash Code 2017

55. Tutoring/mentoring
Learning to teach,
the (easy|hard) way

56. ICTDays Summercamp 2018

57. PeerGirls 2019

58. TeacherDojo 2019

59. TeacherDojo 2019

60. Even more informal
What if there is place where you
can follow your passion, play, meet
peers, and work on your projects?

61. Follow your passion

62. I almost forgot!
Why
coding?
computer science?
computational thinking?

63. Some lessons I’ve
learned by myself

64. Your gears are not
everybody else gears

65. Computers are better
than gears

66. Some kids have lost
the ability to learn by
themselves

67. You are planting seeds

68. Fare lezione vs Insegnare
vs Educare
• Lectio: lettura (reading)
• In-signare: lasciare dei segni
(leave marks)
• E-ducere: condurre fuori (lead out)

69. My journey
Being a
(computer science)
educator

70. Come with me on
my journey…

72. February 21st, 2020
La bellezza
computazionale
della natura