Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Nicoletta Pedrana
Do you remember the first time a computer came into your home?
It came into my home in the 80s,
in the form of a keyboard that was attached to the TV:
it was the Aquarius, the unlucky cousin of the Commodore.
We didn't have expansion memory block,
therefore it was necessary to write long incomprehensible codes
to see something on the screen.
The legend tells that my dad
stayed up a whole night to program a kaleidoscope.
He was very proud and happy.
My brother and I
didn't know what to do with a kaleidoscope,
so we weren't particularly impressed.
The truth is that the real computer arrived a few years later
and we used to do everything with it: we used to instal video games,
there was a virtual encyclopedia with which we could do anything,
we could even go online at some point, a couple of hours a month.
For our parents there were no particular limits
about what we could do with the computer.
The truth is they were much more worried by the television:
there was talk of teledependence,
of how much time was spent in front of the television.
Moreover, in the early 80s
Japanese cartoons appeared
and a lot of families were worried
by this new form of entertainment.
At the time,
Gianni Rodari was one of the few voices outside the choir
and wrote an article in defense of "Ufo Robot".
In that article, Gianni Rodari wrote a lot of interesting things:
the first is that he said that in his house there was no television
and at his parents' house there were no pictured books.
This made me think that every generation of adults
faces some unknown technologies
and must somehow learn how to manage them
and how to use them with children.
Rodari says we should learn to ask children
why they like that technology so much,
listening to their answers with sincere curiosity,
without thinking to already know the right answer,
as we adults usually do.
The other important thing Rodari said
is that we should be interested in
how children see these images
how they use them and make them theirs,
how they use them to fuel imagination, to turn them into something else.
Despite Rodari's article, today we often hear observations on
how much time we spend in front of the computer,
what the kids are gonna do all this time in front of the computer.
Indeed,
we are used to watching the computer and the television
as something very similar:
they both have a screen, they work with electricity,
they are recent inventions.
If you think about it,
with television we can't connect with other people,
we can't use television
to build programs, to create things.
I think we should change our perspective
and start seeing computers
less like a television and more like a brush, a pencil,
something we can pull out and use to create, to express ourselves.
A few years ago, I discovered a place
full of people who saw computers as paintbrushes:
it was a CoderDojo,
a free club run by volunteers from all over the world,
where children learn to program.
They arrive accompanied by parents, with their own computer,
they bring a snack to share with others
and spend time together
figuring out how to do things with their computer.
We use a lot of a platform called Scratch:
it is a free platform,
that allows you to build real programs.
It is a programming language,
but not only that,
it also allows you to share your creations online,
see what others have done,
comment on it, study it and use it to create something else.
The first time I went to a CoderDojo
it was in Bologna, in 2013,
and at first, as usual, rules are explained
for people coming for the first time.
One rule is that adults
can't touch the mouse and keyboard,
the other rule is that you can copy, you can get up
and go and see what others are doing.
Finally,
if you see something that you like, something that intrigues you,
you can explore,
it won't explode.
You can easily not listen to what the teacher is saying
and browse the program.
I had several kids in front of me,
including Edward, a 6-and-a-half-year-old:
he didn't know how to read very well or even use the mouse and keyboard,
so that every time he had to click in the upper part
he hugged the table with his mouse.
He was easily distracted,
because he found a lot of things that interested him in that program
and then asked others for help
or simply went to browse what they had done.
So at the end of the meeting,
while almost everyone had made an animated program
where you could see things happening on the screen,
he had discovered
there was a point in the program where you could draw
and he had spent a lot of time building this robot,
that loomed over the city and fired lightning and thunderbolts.
I was wondering...did it go well?
What did he learn?
And I got the answer
by hearing the pride with which he told his parents
that he had done that with his own hands,
and the curiosity and passion to come back home
and find out how to animate it, how to do other things.
It was me, that day, to struggle the most
because I couldn't help Edward,
by taking the mouse and doing things for him,
I could not tell others to be silent
or tell him to do what the teacher was saying.
That day I had to change the way
in which I imagined teaching children how to use the computer:
I realized that the most important thing
is to create the conditions to make children feel free
and have the courage to explore freely
and to build with their hands.
That's why the most important thing
was to give children concrete projects to build,
something they could disassemble,
they could understand how it was done,
they could show to others,
they could study and rebuild by sharing it with others.
Another very important thing is that the children had time and space
to follow their passions and interests:
Edward, before wanting to animate his character
and maybe make a story or a video game,
he wanted to draw it with his hands.
In addition, there were other children in this environment,
with whom he didn't simply share the year of birth, as in school,
but with whom he could share interests and passions,
with whom he could learn and build together.
Finally, in these environments there is a playful atmosphere,
which doesn't mean children just play.
Just think about
when you engage in something that you love,
and you have fun, you don't even struggle.
Above all, in a playful atmosphere,
when you're playing, you've a strange courage,
you do not feel judged.
If you try anything,
feel free to try to explore,
to jump in and do something you don't know yet.
Over the years I have tried to bring this kind of experience
to different contexts,
at school or in summer centres, using any type of technology
to allow me, together with the computer,
to create and leave children free to express themselves.
There were robots, but also Lego, cardboard, glue, computers,
anything that would allow children to feel like creators.
Other times I found myself telling adults and parents
what we did
and I was asked the question, "So what do they learn?”
When we learn to program,
in an environment where the computer is seen as a paintbrush,
we certainly learn a lot of important concepts
related to mathematics and computer science,
how to create programs, variables, data,
but that's not all!
We also learn how to take a complex problem
and make it simpler
so that a computer is able to execute it.
We learn how to use a solution in different contexts,
to take a problem, break it down and analyze it
to try our solution over and over again,
failing and realizing that mistakes are something important,
if we want to learn new things.
In these environments, we learn to share our ideas
and use others' ideas to create something new.
In these environments, we have fun exploring
and above all
in this type of environment children can change perspective
on how they look at themselves and how they express themselves,
to get in touch with the world and know the world.
When we learn to program
in an environment where computers are brushes,
we are not becoming developers
because we want to be big developers.
My son is four and a half years old, he can't write and he still can't read
and I can't wait for him to learn to write and read,
but not because I want him to become a novelist
or a skilled orator,
but because I can't wait for him to learn for himself,
I can't wait for him to read books and discover new things,
write down his ideas and tell them to others.
When we learn to program
in an environment where a computer is seen as a paintbrush,
we can learn so many other things.
It is not easy to change perspective
on how we imagine the computer, teaching and learning,
but Rodari certainly gave us a good idea:
we should learn to ask questions with sincere curiosity
and listen to the children's answers.
The other important thing is that I'm not telling you
to learn how to program staying awake at night
like my dad did when he built a kaleidoscope
-and he never programmed in his life -
but I ask you:
“What's your kaleidoscope?
What passions keep you awake?
What's the last thing you learned?"
Because if you become an example
and create an environment open to learning
and to home exploration,
you will allow children
to use the computer creatively
and what their minds will keep
are not the colored pixels on the screen,
but the fact that you were curious,
that passion animated you
and that you never gave up.
Thanks.
(Applause)