Turning computer science into a game
By Honor Mahony
A recent European Commission paper remarked that it is "intriguing" that so few people choose to go into information and communication technology (ICT) careers.
Not enough young people, it noted, were making the leap from 'cool' ICT - such as installing to a webcam - to the 'boring' ICT of actually studying it or making it into a career.
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The issue has become a thorny problem for EU policymakers.
By 2015, there is expected to be 900,000 unfilled jobs in the sector - an embarrassment given the eurozone's record unemployment rate. And a major competitiveness issue if other regions facing similar trends, such as the US, India or China, get their act together more quickly.
Although member states have been trying to reverse the trend of falling graduates, the on-the-ground results have been sluggish.
This, say experts, is due both to the fact that schools are slow to change how they teach computer science and due the subject's overall image problem, as a topic for geeks.
"I have spent quite a lot of time looking at the problem of how ICT is taught in schools and what surprises me is that there is still a debate about how it should be done," says David Miller, a former English literature teacher who now works for Kuato Studios, a start-up seeking innovative ways to teach children IT.
"There is clearly a disconnect between the world in terms of computing and information technologies and the world that children are experiencing in school and what they are being taught," he adds.
This is where his new employer comes in.
Kuato studios recently launched a JavaScript-based strategy game: Hakitzu: Code of the Warriors.
At first glance it is similar in principle to most games - one robot has to overcome another. But it is only possible to get your robot to move by entering the instructions in code.
"We wanted to introduce children to the whole language of code and the way that code works in a fun environment – hence robots and arenas and combats," says Miller, who is chief learning architect at Kuato Studios.
"It is quite a strategic game. It is almost like a game of chess so that kids are having a problem to solve at the same time as learning about the syntax of java script," he notes.
Kids playing the game - and they are downloading it across the world from China, to the US and Scotland - are not going to become expert programmers overnight.
But it provides "that lovely initial spark" says Miller.
The makers of Hakitzu hope it will form a part of computer science classes, with traditional lessons often either sticking with old formulas such as learning powerpoint or Microsoft Word, or putting off students by getting them to learn line after line of code.
With girls less likely to become ICT specialists than boys - according to OECD figures, women represent 20 percent of the sector's workforce - Miller notes girls have found the Hakitzu just as appealing as boys.
One group "saw no problem with these beefcake robot warriors bashing the hell out of one another," he said, but added that the underlying attraction of the game, aimed at 12-13 year olds - lies more with its chess-like qualities.
"It’s all about the pedagogy. The coding is only one part of it. More important are the algorithmic habits of mind and the problem-solving aspects. It is about children seeing the flow of code as the code solves problems," he notes.
The idea seems to have struck a chord among teachers.
"We’re now finding a lot of computer science teachers approaching us to ask how can we integrate this into the curriculum," says Miller.