Paul Southwell

Review of Argonne National Laboratory

I took a group of junior high school students here...

I took a group of junior high school students here for a field trip on computers. I was expecting a lot considering the immense staff, DARPA funding, and general reputation. The event was advertised as teaching students about computers and programming in python. We spent the first 30 minutes "pretending" to be robots by moving cups around a table while our partners were encouraged to give "simple commands" like computers do, such as "grasp" "left" and "right." Needless to say, a group of 13 year old children will not remain engaged for long. This was followed by roughly 30 minutes of silent time on iPads playing Light Bot, the free version from hour of code. Very little explanation of what coding is or how computers work was given. We then explored cubelets, basically a high tech toy wherein each block has a specific function and when combined you can get unexpected results. Unfortunately, none of the kits appeared complete and again no link to coding was made. Finally, we used lego branded remote control cars that were programmed via iPad by dragging commands into place. At the end of it all, the kids were asking if we had signed up for the trip for preschool children by accident.