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From June 27 through July 1, 2008, my partner, Rachel Weinberger, and I embarked on an experiment: we ran a computer camp for the kids in our block. We live in one of those close-knit Brooklyn blocks where kids play together on the sidewalk while the parents hang out on their stoops. It's a neighborhood which is mixed economically, racially and linguistically. It's a neighborhood in which people look after each other in tangible ways. It's a great neighborhood. Rachel and I have had the opportunity to get to know the kids, partly because our dog Guinness is a big hit with children, and, well, I guess we just like kids. So we got this crazy idea of trying to teach them how to write computer programs in Python.
12 kids signed up, ages 7 to 14. We hadn't heard about anyone teaching kids this age to write computer programs (though some schools do teach kids to work with a certain graphical program called TurtleWorld), but we decided to give it a try. We decided not to structure the activities very much, but rather to give the students a chance to explore and learn on their own, following their own interests as much as possible. We had between five and seven tutors on any given day, around two kids per tutor, but nonetheless the tutors had to work very hard indeed to respond to all the kids' ideas, and to keep them on track. While of course the kids couldn't become independent programmers in five days (my college students couldn't do that!), they learned a lot, and they were able to accomplish a surprising amount.
It was incredible how the neighborhood rallied around the camp. The parents helped with the organization. The local Australian pub, Sheep Station, offered their space and daily "snack", though who could call Australian hamburgers with pineapple and beets "snack"? The Fifth Avenue Committee offered their space for the day when Sheep Station was busy. Lemur, the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, gave us a tour of their studio for our field trip. One neighbor who is a Web page designer offered to be tutor, and another neighbor who is a professional photographer came over one day to take pictures. Other neighbors provided a laptop projector and snack for the field trip day.
Hofstra was also extremely generous. Three of my Hofstra students volunteered as tutors. Two commuted daily from suburbs in New York and New Jersey, and the other planned a visit east from Seattle so he could be part of the camp! Hofstra provided the computers, setting each of them up with the software we needed. My department got us an easel. We are deeply indebted to the neighborhood and to Hofstra for making the camp such a success.