Poetic Programming in the Classroom

Do you think of yourself as someone who can programme a computer?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jRREn6ifEQ

In this TED Talk, Linda Liukas discusses the poetry of programming.  A couple of years ago I had a go at the Python coding challenge through Grok, alongside several students in the school.  I didn't see poetry in the programming. I saw lots and lots of numbers and symbols that I had to arrange in a very precise way in order to make things work and on top of that I had to use mathematical formulas to solve problems and that really threw me.

Thinking about it now, of course, I can see the parallels. There is a synchonicity and precision required to write both programmes and poetry and there

As frustrating as the process was, though, it was exciting when those algorithms worked and I could make the computer do something that I had instructed. It's been the same when I've experimented with Scratch - but probably more exciting because of it's visual nature.

Liukas argues that code is the next universal language, that software is the interface between information and world. My son is designing a website for friends and he is finding it easier to create it using HTML language than through template sites such as Google Sites or Weebly. He understands that language and how to express himself through it. He has found in programming a means of self-expression. 

As the mother of a young daughter, the part of  Liukas' speech that I connected with most is that she thinks that girls don't know that they aren't supposed to like computers, that it's their parents who instil this. It's parents who think that computers are far removed from the everyday and have some mystical aura. There is a gender gap in STEM professions but as children, both boys and girls have similar interests in science, and as teenagers perform equally well in maths. There have been suggestions that women's confidence gets knocked in stage one Calculus papers at university and this has a knock on affect for them following a STEM pathway  (see report here). It is these things that makes it even more important for girls to learn to code, to find out how things work and to give them the tools to be able to take the mysterial out of computing.

Our so-called 'digital natives' are great at using technology for entertainment like gaming, browsing and texting but that doesn't make students fluent in technologies. They need to be able to write with these technologies as well, just as my son is doing. By experimenting with Python and Scratch I have started my own process towards at least knowing and understanding some of that poetical programming language. However, when my son talks to me about some of the things he can do with it, I appreciate that my knowledge is akin to knowing some simple vocabulary but being unable to construct complex sentences using it.

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