教孩子编程的好处

A quarter-century ago, computer programming and coding were the stuff of university campuses. 这些天, 然而, coding can seem like just another piece of the average elementary school curriculum. The idea is that even our youngest children can benefit from getting a leg up on a lucrative software engineering or cybersecurity career. But to new 电子游戏软件 Professor Marina Umaschi 伯斯, who is one of the world’s leading authorities on the design of new technologies in education, teaching kids to code is about much more than vocational skills. 编码, 伯斯说, is an effective way for children to learn creativity, 协作, 慷慨, 和开放. “I understand coding as a way of expression, not only as a way to problem solve,” 伯斯说. “当你在教编程的时候, 就像你在教东西的时候, you have an opportunity to reach human beings.” 

伯斯 is the mind behind some of the biggest breakthroughs in coding education. She cocreated the wildly popular ScratchJr, one of the world’s most widely used programming languages for kids aged five to seven, which allows children to develop and customize interactive stories and games for free. 她还开发了KIBO, 一个实践, programmable robot kit designed to get young learners started with coding and robotics without computers or screens. 她把编程比作游乐场. Children use their minds and bodies to interact, 合作, 发明, 和解决问题, 她解释说, allowing them to experience “all the richness of a playground.” 

伯斯 comes to the Heights from Tufts University. She is a member of both the Lynch School’s Department of Formative Education, which focuses on how we educate young people to lead lives of meaning and purpose, 以及计算机科学系. The faculty in the year-old Formative Education department include a philosopher, 一个历史学家, 一位人类学家, 人本主义心理学家, 文化心理学家. 伯斯, 以她的计算机科学背景, may seem an unusual addition to this group, 但她是最合适的人选, explained Lynch School of Education and Human Development Dean Stanton Wortham. “It seems like her colleagues are very different from her,沃瑟姆指出, “but they all share this deep interest in the notion of whole human beings and how you facilitate their holistic development.” 

苔丝莱文森, a doctoral student at BC who followed 伯斯 from Tufts despite the challenge of switching universities mid-degree, said the department is an excellent match for 伯斯. “I would have followed Marina anywhere,” Levinson said. “She cares about understanding who we are as whole people, which is why I think a formative education program is a nice fit for her.”

 Among 伯斯’s many research projects is one funded by the US Department of Education, researching how kindergarteners through second graders in Boston and Rhode Island learn coding. Another project takes place at a school in Jerusalem, where teachers are trained to use coding to help Palestinian and Israeli kindergarteners find common ground, 参与共同的表达活动, 克服冲突. 

伯斯 had her first experience with programming while growing up in Argentina during the eighties. 当她十岁的时候, her mother sent her and her brother to an IBM office to learn Logo, 一种新的儿童编程语言. 起初, 伯斯 was more interested in the free soda and cookies than in the coding, but she said she quickly realized that she could use programming as a tool to tell stories. 作为阿根廷的一个年轻人, 伯斯 first followed her passion for stories into journalism and communication sciences. In the mid-nineties she moved to the States, earning a master’s degree in education at Boston University and then a PhD at MIT. 在麻省理工的时候, 她师从西摩·派珀特, a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence and an early advocate of computer science as a tool for childhood development. He also 发明ed Logo, the coding language that 伯斯 learned as a child. 

她的最新项目, in 协作 with colleagues at Tufts and the University of California–Irvine, is a prototype for a smart playground at BC’s Children’s Center that will help children develop coding and computation skills while engaging in active play. 

“We’re very pleased that she has joined us,” Wortham said of the Lynch School’s new hire. “她有非凡的活力. She’s doing so many different high quality, impactful things all at once.” 

“Technology has the potential to make us more human,” 伯斯说. “来到不列颠哥伦比亚省对我来说是一种方式.”