Ask Slashdot: What Should a Children's Computer Museum Look Like? (yourobserver.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: If you're a wealthy techie looking for a way to establish your legacy, the City of Sarasota has a 117,000-square-foot children's science museum that's vacant and could use a little TLC. Housed on prime Bayfront property, the building that once housed the Gulf Coast Wonder and Imagination Zone might make a fine children's computer museum.

So in case any of those CEOs who stress the importance of getting children interested in CS are reading and want to put their money where their mouth is, any suggestions about what a kids' version of the Computer History Museum should look like? Something like an Apple Store? Microsoft Store? Something else?
There's often criticism about the ways computer science gets taught in schools -- so leave your suggestions in the comments. What would a good children's computer museum look like?

Comments

Say what now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we so removed from reality that a goddam children's computer museum needs to look like a fucking Apple or Microsoft store?

Here's an idea.

Fill it up with computers. I don't mean new computers, I mean old computers (it's a goddam history museum after all). Toss in a few working IBM mainframes with some punch card readers and tape drives. Maybe a couple of DEC PDPs with some disk packs. Make sure everything works, that there's lots of blinking lights and switches to play around with, and then teach the little buggers how to run the hardware. Sit them down in front of an IBM 2741 and show them how to use it. Let them toggle in the boot program on a PDP. Doesn't matter as long as it's interactive and they get to see the result of their efforts.

Those that are interested will come back for more. Those that aren't... Well, you can't force them to be interested in something that they're not. We've got enough of that going on in the education system with all the schools trying to force comp sci on everyone.

For the love of god, though, don't open "another computer museum" where people can look but not touch. I'm fine with that sort of things, but kids aren't. Little Johnny isn't going to point at the IBM 701 and say "Mommy, mommy, what's that big thing do?" unless he gets to see the tape drives spinning and the lights blinking.

Re:Say what now?

[angel'o'sphere]

every modern CPU is really just a Turing machine after all
No it is not, and neither was the Enigma cracker.

No idea why /. is full with comments of people who don't grasp the differences between a turing machine and a turing complete machine/language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

BTW, if you need another term to throw around without grasping what it is/how it works: basically all modern CPUs are "Von Neumann Machines", enjoy!

Re:Say what now?

[silentcoder]

We're talking about a children's museum. The relatively subtle difference between a Turing Machine and a RAM based CPU is not actually at a level where I think they are suitable for a children's museum.
Christopher was not a Turing machine and nobody claimed it was - but then, it wasn't a computer either. It wasn't programmable, let alone reprogrammable. It was essentially a mathematical pattern matching machine that was used to brute force the code-breaking. There are elements of it's architecture which later computers replicated but the key design was very different and it was a single-purpose machine. Even Turing wouldn't have called it a version of his idealized mathematical concept known as the Turing Machine.
A CPU with memory and instructions however, are about as close as we could get to building something which is meant to contain an infinite length piece of paper.

Random Access Memory was, to my mind, really just a major optimization over his sequential access model.

http://www.groklaw.net/article... This article explains the point better than I can.

Education is a skill known as a lies-to-children. You start with simple, but flagrantly untrue, explanations - which makes more complicated lies understandable and you don't get to anything resembling 'true' explanations until grad school.
For children - a Turing machine is the concept that was realized in CPUs. That allows you to then go on and explain Turing-completeness and finally RAM designs with people who now understand the basic principles of computing.

Von Neumann's architecture differs from Turing machines in being about something fundamentally different. Turing was developing the early stages of computing theory (though he had set out to do something very different - attempt to create a new language for expressing mathematical proofs in) while Von Neumann's was an engineering design - the seperation of data and instruction while both are in the same basic format (and possibly even on the same medium) was a way to practically put Turing's pencil-holder into the machine itself, but it was an engineering concept.
Both are still fundamental to how computers work to this day - and for children's level education that's all you can or OUGHT TO try and teach. You can't possibly teach the next level to somebody who hasn't first heard this lie. That's not how education works or ever can work because it isn't how human brains learn things.

Lots of hands on activities

[Mostly a lurker]

It should be designed in such a way that kids can actually make the exhibits work, not just tell them how it works. All other considerations are secondary. However, dramatic comparisons like an IBM 350 disk unit displayed alongside a modern mSATA drive will also make an impression.

Probably a website.

[dgatwood]

To play devil's advocate here, the idea of children's computer museums and science museums is nice and all, but realistically there's a reason why these things close down, and it usually comes down to not making enough money to keep the lights on. Perhaps a nice interactive science website with VR would be a better way to spend the money, rather than restoring a building whose design results in high upkeep costs, plus the cost of staffing and renting exhibits and so on.

I mean, the city of Sarasota was spending something like $150k+ in maintenance every year just to keep the building from deteriorating further. At ten bucks a head, it takes 15,000 visitors every year (almost 10% of their total during the final years) just to pay for the absolute minimum level of upkeep. I'd imagine the real numbers to keep the building in good shape were at least double that. A good target for a business is closer to 5%. Basically, that building is a money pit.