Last weekend, NYU's ITP Lab hosted New York's 2018 Creative Coding Fest (CCFest)! This year, it was offered to educators, students, coders, design thinkers and anyone looking to experiment with new creative coding. The morning keynote from Nicole He demonstrated some super exciting projects, like her Raspberry Pi plant photographer (Grow Slow) and an Arduino-based button for summoning video game players via Twitter (Killer Queen Summoner).
It's always fun to see this type of creative work, but it was also so helpful to hear Nicole's perspective on the benefits of being a beginner. Without taking risks, focusing on small improvements and prioritizing "finished" over "perfect", there can be too much internal & external pressure to even finish a project. Approaching with a beginner mindset can help you escape that perfection paralysis. It was also amazing to see so many different learners coming together! I first sat with students from middle and high schools in NYC, who were (amazingly enough) volunteering to spend a gorgeous Saturday inside learning about code. CCFest's primary organizer Saber Khan did a great job of introducing the event as an all-inclusive, non-competitive experience. In the following sessions, I got to dive in hands-on for some really nifty projects.
This weekend was heavy on practice with p5.js, a new JavaScript platform developed by the incredibly talented Lauren McCarthey at NYU's ITP (which I explored briefly over the summer in another post). In a lot of ways in performs like other JS coding environments, but it's focus on implementation as a canvas-based sketchbook allows for a low entry point that can entice new users. The first a.m. session discussed the NY DOE's new Introduction to Computational Media curriculum, and how teachers can use p5 to scaffold simple coding challenges for students. Going through a few of the challenges myself, I'm not sure if these projects could be implemented right away with any class, but they provide some excellent guidelines for scaffolding this work!
The next session demonstrated Sonic Pi as a platform for music composition, which could be a particularly fun project for using music to inspire students to learn coding! Every year, there are students who can't seem to get inspired by coding for games & visuals, but allowing them to use music as the motivator could hook them into learning a new coding language. After making some killer jams, our presenter also demonstrated some methods for interfacing Sonic Pi with (you guessed it) p5 to create visualizations of data, similar to something that Windows Media Player did in the early 2000s. The difference here is that there's something truly magical about actually creating these visuals yourself - if you want to sync your downbeat with a dancing Corgi sprite, why not?? Sonic Pi uses Ruby, a particularly accessible language for first-time coders. Although sometimes you might find a lag in playtime when running Sonic Pi off the Raspberry Pi, you can tweak your particular set-up to make sure the feedback is speedy enough for avid musicians.
The last portion of the day focused on importing data through CSV files into p5, allowing the user to make their own responsive infographic. The applications of this lesson for data display, math integrations and charting are huge! Students can collect their own data with Google Forms, save the spreadsheet, and code their own demonstrations of the data using simple p5 visualizations. This coding challenge is more appropriate for an upper-beginner/intermediate coder, but the presentation organizers had some tips for implementation.
By knowing your students and being patience, you can help them reach that beginner mindset. Focus on the learning process rather than the product, and students will be able to find their own creative ways to adapt these projects on their own!
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