Translator: Gisela Giardino Reviewer: Elia Gasparolo
I come to tell you something that is almost a confession:
In the last years I developed a strange obsession
to ensure that all children learn to program computers.
I know that this idea is not new,
but I'm increasingly convinced of its enormous potential
to help us transform education.
What helps me most to think this
is a phenomenon that some call "software is eating up the world."
I think it's something
that is better understood by some examples.
Just 10 years ago, Steve Jobs gathered his team
and said he was determined to design and manufacture a phone.
At this meeting, there were faces of concern and even fear,
because competition
had much more experience than them on the subject.
But Jobs was very confident.
He said: "The advantage is ours,
because we are a software company and they aren't."
And in just two years the first iPhone was ready
and last year they sold 170 million units.
And with that they came to build
what is now the most valuable company in the world.
Its market value --
if someone around wants to buy it --
is over 730 billion dollars.
For you to have a reference, further down I put
the market value of the most valuable company in our country,
which is related to the oil business.
But before doing that, Jobs had realized
that portable devices to play music
could also be transformed into small computers.
Today, they seem to be launching a smart watch.
And some say that they are designing an electric car.
What you see here is a modern electric car.
It has millions of lines of code working on dozens of computers.
This represents more than 30 percent of the value of that car.
But do you know what's amazing about these cars?
It's that if you want them to have more features,
that they can do more things,
you don't have to buy a new car,
because many of these things simply come
with software updates.
One day, the car connected to the Internet,
may come up with a new autopilot or with better acceleration.
I recommend that you look at these cars with great respect,
because there is already a version of these car models
with an acceleration from 0 to 100 km/h in just 3.1 seconds.
Who makes all these changes?
Who makes all these incredible technological things
that these modern devices have?
Well, more and more, programmers do.
And how are programmers? How do we imagine them?
I had a picture I wanted to show you,
of how we imagine programmers,
depicting the typical nerd, the geek that many imagine
and that really brings many problems in our profession.
You don't imagine programmers to be like that, right?
I was programmer for many years, tell me you don't, thanks.
To combat these stereotypes
that really cause many problems in our profession,
I want to say that the first computer programmer was a woman.
She was the daughter of the English poet Lord Byron.
She was Ada King, Countess of Lovelace and unfortunately lived only 36 years.
And Ada was not only the first computer programmer,
but she wrote her first program with a pencil and paper,
more than 100 years before the first electronic computer
was started in 1946.
A giant of 27 tons that was called ENIAC.
When they started this computer
all the lights in Philadelphia would flicker.
It was so big that people worked literally inside the computer,
the whole programming team, consisting of six people.
All of them women. You can see two of them in this photo.
And ENIAC could do very fast calculations,
it could do 400 multiplications per second.
But that's nothing compared to what computers can do,
the ones you have, that we all have, that we call smartphones.
These computers can do
up to 50 billion operations per second.
They weigh less than 300 grams and work with a 3-volt battery.
That is how technology advanced during all this time.
Now, what do we do to begin working with these technologies?
What do we do to bring these technologies into the classroom?
Because there is something very interesting:
These computers that we see,
you have them in your pocket, in your purse, in your hand, right?
It's like we can't detach from computers.
And some of you perhaps are using them now,
while I'm talking.
And maybe you do this because you know that when this talk is over, you say:
"Santiago's talk was good,"
this is being captured with lots of cameras,
which are actually computers, and then the video will be edited
with a software to edit digital video.
And you will be able to watch the result
anywhere, at home, at any time,
through a computer network and software that we call the Internet;
in a software product called YouTube,
from a software company called Google,
that was founded just 17 years ago.
I said it right: I lived 30 years of my life without Google.
All this is what we call "Software is eating the world."
I was lucky to see the transformation a little more closely,
because I always worked in the industry.
And a few years ago I decided to search
for a place where what I learned could help more people, have more impact.
That's when we cross paths
with the Sadosky Foundation which is doing many things,
but what excites us the most is the one related to education.
It's a product we call Programar, Program.ar.
I know, the name is a feast in originality, don't mention it.
And later I will talk about creativity, anyway --
It's what we came up with.
And we are doing this project with many organizations, NGOs,
institutions, volunteers, and our goal is very clear:
we want all the kids
to have the opportunity to learn programming and computer science,
from primary school.
And if they let us do it from an earlier stage, even better.
What we want is that children
create new things with computers.
That they learn to be on the other side of the keyboard.
And we don't want to do this to form more programmers.
We hope that from this more kids will choose careers in computing,
computer science, information technology,
because those are fascinating careers that are changing the world
and the country needs it a lot.
But for us, that is like thinking that you want to teach
addition and subtraction so that there are more mathematicians,
or that you want to teach writing so that there are more authors.
So, if we don't want to do this for that reason, then, what for?
I'll now give you three reasons
why we are promoting this educational change.
The most important ones.
The first is to see computers as a means of expression
through which children can display their natural creativity.
We want us to be put closer to music, drawing, drama.
Piaget's favorite disciple worked these ideas the most.
His name is Seymour Papert.
Already in 1971 he was writing
about all the things kids can do with computers.
In the introduction to his article, Papert poses a dilemma,
and the dilemma is this:
"Some people think of using the computer to program the child;
others think of using the child to program the computer."
Papert loves to talk about someone who was perhaps
the most creative, the most ingenious,
the best designer in history.
Leonardo designed dozens of machines throughout his life
and it is clear he was a genius.
Ideas sprang from his head permanently,
even radical ideas, unthinkable for his time.
But Leonardo also had a huge advantage:
He was a master draftsman.
His ideas flowed naturally from his amazing brain
into his incredible hands.
And what we see when we observe this
is that kids who can use the computer --
a computer is an expressive medium,
better than pen and paper, because it's dynamic --
have an advantage.
They have like superpowers.
They can do things others kids can't do.
Leonardo could have done many things with a computer.
For example, he could have found many of the errors
their designs had.
Obviously, now it's very easy to detect them, like for instance,
in the tank war he designed.
He placed the gears wrong in it,
so the wheels on one side turned in the opposite direction from the other ones.
But this is what gives those powers to children
to display their creativity.
And believe me:
It is a lot easier to program a computer
than learning to draw like Leonardo.
The title of a book that was published in our country,
captures exactly the first reason I just described:
We want to help unfold the wings children's minds come with
from the factory.
Because if we can make these wings unfold,
all we have to do afterwards,
is to show them thousand places where those wings can take them.
The second reason has to do with something
we hear all the time nowadays,
and it's that school today has to do less with knowledge,
with memorizing things,
and increasingly more with developing skills, abilities,
with learning to think.
But what do you do to help kids in learning to think?
I'm sure there are many ways to do this.
But I can talk about only one, the one I know:
Let us teach children to program computers.
I warned you this was an obsession so it is clear.
What are the capabilities children develop
when they learn to program computers?
Many.
One is learning to abstract,
to model, to represent reality.
Because a computer program
most of the time, is simply this:
a model of reality.
Consider, for example, programs working with people's information.
There are many programs that do that,
for example, a voter registration list.
If I want to make this program I'll have to decide
which characteristics and behavior of people interest me,
to solve this problem in particular.
I'll have to choose the name, the surname, the ID,
their address, if they voted or not,
and I will rule out other things such as hair color,
or if they play soccer or not.
If I chose well these characteristics,
if I did well my abstraction,
my program will work.
If I did it wrong, my program won't work.
There's a second skill
that is developed when programming computers.
It has to do with problem solving,
what we call algorithmic thinking.
How from a series of steps one problem is solved.
Children at school learn many algorithms,
but they don't learn the concept of algorithm.
An algorithm they learn, for example, is to divide two numbers.
I think it's very good that kids learn
that given problem,
there are actually many algorithms available to solve that problem.
Some will work. And others will not.
And within the algorithms that work,
some will do things more efficiently than others.
In computer science we call this: complexity.
Now, if all this I'm saying,
complexity, algorithms, abstraction, modeling,
worries you: "How am I going to teach that to a child?"
"All that is very difficult,"
"How do I teach that?"
Well, I want to show you now
a video of an experience we did a couple of months ago
very close to here, in a settlement, in the city of Buenos Aires.
What you are going to see now are kids learning sorting algorithms
of data structures.
And for the kids to understand it better we are teaching them without computers.
(Video starts)
The guys pretend to work with a computer
that has a single processor,
which is represented by the circle they have before them.
So, what they have to do
is to move forward in pairs to this circle
make the comparison, and try to find as soon as possible
their proper place in the line,
ordering themselves from the highest to the lowest.
When they find their right place,
they can change the banners they have.
From red to green.
(Video ends)
The third reason has to do
with school as a means
to help us understand the world around us.
For that, for example, we learn natural science.
We learn physics, chemistry, biology,
botany, zoology, many things.
But the question is:
How can we understand the world around us
without understanding how computers work?
If you don't know what they can and can't do.
Until when will children learn that a virus
is an infectious, acellular, microscopic agent
- I think I said it right, any biologist out there? -
and not what a computer virus is?
A simple program they can view and edit.
That they understand what damage it can and cannot do.
And for that, we have to think about
the world in the next 12 years,
when kids that are beginning school today, finish it.
I talked about three things:
to see computers as a means of expression,
to enhance creativity;
using the computer to learn to think,
and to use the computer to understand the world around us.
There is one more thing:
The technology gap and dependence.
Because we will never ever be able to be a developed country
if we are country which is behind, in terms of science and technology.
And we have to think
that computing is not only a science,
but also the technology behind
almost every major scientific advances
of the last decades.
Because we can't understand how the human brain works,
nor we can analyze the genome
if we don't count with computers and software.
In the past years we improved a lot.
Our scientists are excellent.
We even lead in several subjects.
But the path we have to tread is still very long.
And if you think of it, you will realize
that today, we live a new Papert's dilemma:
but applied to countries.
And as a country, we have two options,
they are just two:
to program or to be programmed.
(Applause)