Often we talk about people as if they are
art people or science people, they are computer
people and it doesn't have to be that way.
People who are artistic can also be scientist.
People who are computer scientists can also
be fascinated by the natural world and want
to make beautiful art.
I am Ben Shapiro and I am the director of
the Laboratory for playful computation.
The reason it is called Laboratory for playful
computation is because there is a lot of really
powerful things that happen in play.
Play is dynamic, it's improvisational, it's
fun - it's often about defining, using and
challenging rules.
It's often very social.
Those are all things that we think are important
to education overall, but are also fundamentally
related to computer science.
One project that we are doing is called luminous
science.
It's an investigation of how education in
schools can combine computer science education
with art education and science education.
The basic premise for the project is that
young people will identify phenomena in the
world they want to better understand.
For example hydroponic garden in our classroom,
that they will use computational technologies
to measure and collect data from what is happening
inside that phenomenon.
They will stream that data over a network
to other systems that they program.
Those systems can create beautiful art that
renders what is happening inside those phenomena
in ways that help people understand the science.
We think that creating a space that is all
about young people having their own playful
goals, having their own playful processes
is the right frame to being an experience
that is about designing their own computational
systems.
