I’m working on a new curriculum for my intro to computer science class that will exclusively use Sparki for the whole year. The premise is this. Similar to the health classes of the 80’s where students had to take care of an egg for a full month, my curriculum would require students to take care of their sparki’s for a full year. Students will name them, decorate them and program them, with the objective of making them as “human” as possible. As parents teach their kids about being human and humanity, students will be required to teach their robots to be “human”. The will spend their time journaling and programming their robots. I set up a facebook page for my robot. I renamed him Jenson. Sparki was taken.
I hope kids get the exposure to programming but also think about the bigger issues of man and the machines and the blurring boundaries between them as our computers get faster and more capable. Any thoughts, comments and recommendations are absolutely welcome. I’ve thrown this idea out to teachers and students and seem to have gotten a positive response. Please send ideas and things that you might think help me out. Join my facebook page.