#Unplugged #Computer #Science
What do you want to be when you grow up Olivia? Umm, an astronaut! Do you happen to know what a computer programmer is? Yeahh, umm, no. Umm, what what? I’m not really sure how to explain it. Computer programming is pretty simple. It’s a set of instructions, like a recipe.
You have to follow them step by step to get the end result you want. Computer science is a way to impact the world. It can be music videos, it can be games, detect whether or not someone is related to someone else. Find you know, people’s friends.
You can do all sorts of other crazy things that actually save lives. You do have to have a drive I think. It is to me like a paintbrush. I think great programming is not all that dissimilar from great art.
When I finally learned a little bit of programming, that blank wall resolved into a bunch of doors and you open them and of course then you find behind them is another hallway filled with a bunch of doors. Programming is fun and easy. You can do anything your mind wants to do.
Finally you start to open enough doors the light comes in. To me a finished program is like a structure filled with light. All the corners are illuminated. The number of people that you can touch and interact with is something the world has never seen before.
Our first lesson in this series is all about what computer science is, what a computer scientist does and how you can be more responsible in your use of technology. It’s a very important lesson but it is a little text-heavy.
At the end, you get to make your very own customized encoding using your initials. It’s a fun activity and it’s very empowering because binary is one of those things that feels very technical but once you understand it, it’s like you speak a secret language.
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