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Ask Slashdot: High-School Suitable Books On How Computers Affect Society?
An anonymous reader writes "We are teaching an introductory class in computer science for high school students. We have the technical aspects of the course covered, there is a lot of information on the internet on designing that aspect of the class. We also want to cover some aspects of how computers affect society, privacy, expectations, digital divide etc. We were suggested Blown to Bits, which covers a lot of this but I'm not sure high school students are really going to enjoy it or even take away the right implications ... any recommendations for anything else ? Movies, Fiction, Non-Fiction Books and any other media are all welcome. Students are expected to read no more than 200 pages (that's all the time they have)."
How about Lessig's Code 2.0? It's cyberlaw's pathbreaking book, and it's written in a very accessible way. It's free online at http://www.codev2.cc/.
True, too true.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
I haven't seen anyone as good as Clay Shirky in studying and predicting the effects of the internet on society.
http://www.amazon.com/Here-Comes-Everybody-Organizing-Organizations/dp/1594201536
-- Miki Tebeka The only difference between children and adults is the price of the toys.
You might also look at selecting a story or two from Gibson's Burning Chrome, but as I don't have a copy handy at the moment, I can't make a hard recommendation.
Another consideration might be George Alec Effinger's When Gravity Fails. READ this one before you assign it, as it touches on some racy subject matter.
Finally, consider Daniel Keys Moran's The Long Run. Not as well known as the others, but a great read.
Hope this helps....
-Red
Why not spend the time you have teaching them some practical information they can use? How are they going to benefit from hearing someone's social agenda? Are the students there for your benefit, for you to use to advance your societal goals? Or are you there for their benefit, to help them learn things and improve their future lives?
My suggestion: skip these "society" lessons and use the time to teach them how to search text with regular expressions.
-Red
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=books+computers+society
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
1984 has always been written by Orson Welles.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/giftfire/
Used this in university, but should be easy enough of a read for HS students.
It's fiction, it's exciting, the protagonist is a high schooler, and it talks about crypto. Neil Gaiman approved.
http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/
FREE BOOK. 136 Pages PDF. Other formats also available.
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Fahrenheit 451 might be too long, but germane.
... that you keep the course limited to the 'technical aspects' of the course?
The students would likely be better served if the course focused on the computer science instead of those other sociological and/or political matters.
I remember taking my first similar class in high school. Already being a very limited hobbyist programmer at the time, it was easier for me that most of my classmates. I did learn some better practices, and it was rewarding for me to be able to help out my classmates, some of whom found a few of the concepts fairly alien. The class focused on syntax, logic, and math. That was enough to keeps things moving forward, and by the end of the course, we were all creating simple programs and pleased to see what we can get the computers to do when we put what we had learned into practice.
Looking back at that, I think we'd have been derailed if we were then forced to consider things like digital divide or privacy expectations. I'm not saying that those matters aren't things worth considering, but not in an introductory class. Leave that material for a later elective... let the kids get their hands dirty right out of the gate.
Thankfully, the extraordinary productive power of division of labor and fossil fuels allow us to afford both amusement and repression! Take that, dystopian future!
People really should not be allowed to teach until they have at least 10 non-teaching years (full time, paid) of experience in the area they want to teach.
May be useful for vocational schools, where a particular trade is taught, but what does this mean for sciences? What would full time, paid experience in theoretical physics look like? Math? Computer science? Keeping in mind that the difference between programming an computer science is like that between writing a novel and methodically studying 1000 novels written by others. Understanding the nature and the laws of computation is not at all the same as churning out java script snippets, and no amount of coding alone will make one a computer scientist. A theoretical computer scientist, OTOH, does not have to know programming at all: she can produce a major impact with nothing but math.
The only meaningful prerequisite for teaching fundamental science is doing research, which is what many graduate students do. And doing fundamental research is quite different from the full time, paid experience. For starters, it requires leisure, and nothing specific can be expected to come out of it.
DoublePlus whoosh!
(FTFY)
Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut....
Dan Means
One of the reasons we live in dangerous times is due to the fact that those who ignore history tend to wind up repeating it.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Start reminiscing about the days of punch cards and teletypes. Few peopel are interested in last years technology much less decades ago.