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Software Engineering Demo for a K-5 Career Fair?
gmjohnston asks: "A local elementary school is having a Career Fair in a couple of weeks and I
volunteered. The idea is for parents with various jobs and careers to show and tell the kids a little bit about what their's is, why they think it's interesting and rewarding, etc. It's to try to give kids a little early exposure to some of the diverse kinds of things one can do with one's life. I'm a software engineer, so I'd like to show something that has to do with programming or Computer Science, but which would be interesting
to an elementary school student." What would be the best way to illustrate what a software engineer does to a group of primary school kids?
"I'm trying to come up with something like what got me hooked way back when, which was when my Organic Chemistry professor in college showed me a listing of a Basic program (Basic Plus on a PDP-11/70 running RSTS/E if you must know) and I realized that, computers relied on a bunch of instructions that tell the machine what to do, and that if I could change the instructions then I could make the machine do what *I* want it to do! I'll have my laptop with me and I'll be at a table that the kids will be able to gather around and see the screen (or potentially do something themselves on the laptop, depending on what I come up with). Of course, showing them the kind of code I really work on (software development tools) would likely instantly bore them to death. So, the question is: What should I show? If other Slashdot readers have done this kind of thing, what did you do and how did it work out?"
Bring loads of coffee in with you and feed it to the kids to get them hyper, give them all keyboards and glasses to simulate eye strain. Break their wrists to simulate RSI and get a megaphone with someone shouting 'code faster'...
Show them how to quickly switch the browser window away from /. whenever the PHB comes by.
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
A basic understanding of how to speak Hindi...
Bring a cardboard box and a chair and make them sit in it for 8 hours a day for the entire school year...
Bring in some anime DVD's, some pr0n, an empty pizza box, and a crusty sock. If that doesn't convince them, I don't know what will!
Show them how to write a BitTorrent client in LOGO. All the kids are doing it.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
What would be the best way to illustrate what a software engineer does to a group of primary school kids?
It depends on the programmer. I wouldn't do anything to them at all.
What do software engineers do to primary schools kids?
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Dilbert in front of a class:
"I work in a cube, its kinda like a bathroom stall but the walls are lower"
"I spend most of my days worring about the electronic fields from my monitor are killing me"
by the end all the children are in tears..
I like this approach. We have enough competetion, the fewer of us there are the more they'll have to pay us.
Then I'd color it with bright primary colors and cel-shade it because cel-shading is fucking RAD.
Or turn up in a sports car with a leggy blonde on your arm.
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." What would be the best way to illustrate what a software engineer does to a group of primary school kids?
Pick a random Indian kid and put him in charge of the stall halfway through.
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Explain to them that the entire world is run by computers, and by doing things in the computer, you can affect the "real world". Then hack the school lunch network while they watch and transfer everybodies lunch money into your kids account. "And now you all have to ask Tommy for lunch, because Tommy knows computers, and you don't!" Not a direct endorsement for software design, but it'll get them to see nerds in a whole new way. Oh, then teach your kid how to fight.
If you want to get the kids interested in your job, pretend to be a fireman.
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They're only young, at least give them a chance to have a life when they grow up. In fact, it's probably your moral obligation to scare them off software engineering -- I wish someone did it to me.
They won't *all* end up EA employees ...
Modern children can understand math quite well, they just need to be shown how fun and interesting it can be. I think this could be a great opportunity to do just that. Generate a fractal such as the Mandelbrot Set where a very simple mathematical formula produces beautiful images. Kids could experiment with zooming in to find interesting regions of the set. More advanced kids could try changing the formula slightly to produce new interesting fractals (for example, z=z^3+c instead of z=z^2+c).
To make the code simpler and more clear to beginners you would probably want to use a programming language that supports complex variables and has simple graphing commands.
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