西北工業(yè)大學(xué)明德學(xué)院本科畢業(yè)設(shè)計論文 1 Robots Make Computer Science Personal They also make it more hands-on, real, practical, and immediate ,inspiring a new generation of scientists deep interest in the field. Computer science has lost its appeal, and robots can help find it. Even as computing has in vadedevery aspect of our lives, CS as a field of study is often seen as disconnected from these same lives. So to reestablish the connection,the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE, ) is developing a personal robot, software,and curricula to help teach introductory CS courses. Imbued with the proper pedagogical philosophy and training, it can help make CS mor- epersonal. Who is to blame for the current lack of interest ? Well, me, for one. But CS education has long been a student repellent, along with what might be viewed as asocial industry practices and unfortunate Hollywood stereotypes. Though there are islands of hope (such as Carnegie Mellon University and the Georgia Institute of Technology), overall, fewer students are enrolling in CS courses, staying with them,or moving into industry because w e have was hed them out of the classroom and the pipeline. Then again, maybe the lack of interest simply reflects the state of the U.S. economy. But if you look at the numbers over the past 20 years, at least some invariants cant be explained away by economic booms and busts. Women and minorities have always been underrepresented in computing； their numbers in the U.S. peaked almost 25 y ears ago. Meanwhile, from 1998 to 2004 the enrollment of women in CS fell 80%, from about 1.5% to about 0.25%, according to the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California,Los Angeles (/heri/heri.html) 4. This trend is related to CSs rep utation for being impersonal to all types of students, as reflected in the falling enrollment figures across the board, also according to the Higher Education Research Institute. Foll owing recent research in CS gender issues, we no w know much mor e about the weaknesses in CS education 2, most notably that students personal values are often 西北工業(yè)大學(xué)明德學(xué)院本科畢業(yè)設(shè)計論文 2 at odds with the environment in CS classrooms. For example, long solitary hours in the laboratory obsessing over minute details is exactly the opposite of what many students are looking for. If CS educators would confront this reality and develop the pedagogical principles needed to fix it, w e could at least hope that the gr owing crisis in the CS pipeline might be ameliorated. Toward this end, my colleagues and I at IPRE have embarked on a multiyear project to create new introductory CS courses and textbooks designed to be accessible and inspiring to all students. The curricula are centered around a small personal robot (about the size of a paperback book) tentatively named Gyro being developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology (see the figure here). Our visions that each student would pur chase one for about$150 retail at their college bookstores, using them throughout their CS explorations. IPRE was initiated through a $1 million grant from Microsoft Research, announced in July 2006. At first glance, using robots may sound like a strange way to attract into CS those students who have traditionally been intimidated, excluded, or weeded-out of the field. One could imagine that robots would only exacerbate the problem rather than help alleviate it. However, CS is fundamentally about problem solving, and the example problems assigned to students in the classroom can profoundly influence ho w they perceive CS relevance and useful-ness. For example, an instructor who illustrates the topic of parsing with a com -piler example has lost an opportunity to connect CS with the rest of the everyday world. Exclusively using such incestuous examples is the equivalent of computer science for the computer scientist. We must provide motivation that is instantly appreciated and understood by all. Having an artifact in this case a robot provides intrinsic motivation to both the instructor and the student to explore the science and engineering behind it. Students continue for reasons (such as fun, curiosity, and to show off to family and friends) that are very different from those traditionally identified. Consider a student who writes a program that produces the output 5 then later disco vers the correct output is 4. The instructor would likely attempt to motivate this students innate interest in the art and science of debugging. However , the goal of producing the correct answer motivates only some students, while others see it only as a way to 西北工業(yè)大學(xué)明德學(xué)院本科畢業(yè)設(shè)計論文 3 please the instructor. Now consider an assignment that requires students to write a pro-gram to create a dancing robot. The notion of correct answers is thrown out the window. In addition, the instructor doesnt have to artificially motivate debugging because the students generate their own motivation. They initiate the debugging conversation, eager to understand and fix a program not because it is perceived by the instructor as wrong but because the robot doesnt do what they want it to do. Projects like robot dancing represent a more natural learning environment, focusing on the creative not the merely correct. Our embrace of the personal robot in the class-room is built on the shoulders of creative giants, including: Karel. In the form of an ASCII character or toy-like robot only a few pixels tall, it moves through at grid world picking up and dropping off beepers3； Alice. Controlling beautifully rendered characters(such as chickens, snowmen, and ovens), it allows students to create animated stories()； and Lego Mindstor ms. These build-it-yourself robots are packaged as a kit (). Our vision of a personal robot in the classroom adds to the conversation. It will emerge from its box, perhaps in the form of an egg or small creature rolling around on its own wheels, immediately usable by students for writing simple control programs or for instant messaging other robots and using the IMs to allow them to coordinate their robots behaviors. They will operate in the real-world environment of walls and gravity, a place quite different from Karels beeper-tagged grid world. In addition, the software, called Myro, we are developing for controlling robot movements, reactions, and environmental sensing can be used in real robotics research projects. (Myro is implemented in Iron-Python and C# running on .NET and Mono, the open sour ce- implementation of .NET .) It will help students progress fr om introductory coursework to more advanced concepts (such as data structures and object-oriented programming). It will be able to control a variety of simulated, educational, and commercial robots, including Mobile Rs Pioneer, iRs Roomba, 西北工業(yè)大學(xué)明德學(xué)院本科畢業(yè)設(shè)計論文 4 and Lego Mindstorms. It will enhance students understanding of what it means for software to perform within and despite the constraints and opportunities of the physical world, helping bring a sense of authenticity to the class-room, for which there is no substitute. Guided by the philosophical principle of pedagogical scalability, IPRE looks for tools that are simple to understand and use immediately yet provide strong . One such tool is the language Python, which is intuitive, powerful, and easy to learn () 1. We have been exploring its use in CS education for several years. We now hope to develop and identify a library beyond Myro, Gyro, and Python of pedagogically scalable hardware, software, and course ware tools for teaching CS. Robots are no silver bullet for overcoming the current difficulty attracting and keeping students. But they can be used in combination with other ideas to create a mor e meaningful, accessible, interesting, intellectually challenging medium for teaching. We hope that they, along with personal open-ended assignments and a scalable pedagogical framework, will help attract, inspire, prepare, and keep a large and diverse group of students. Our aim is for them to find CS more satisfying, as well as a great place to refine their computational thinking, creativity , and career ambitions. We begin testing these ideas in the classroom in the spring of 2007 at both Bryn Mawr College and the Georgia Institute of Technology, then explore the possibilities over the following three years. If all goes well, perhaps these personal robots will help CS regain the universal appeal it once had. 西北工業(yè)大學(xué)明德學(xué)院本科畢業(yè)設(shè)計論文 5 譯文： 機(jī)器人技術(shù)使計算機(jī)科學(xué)更加貼近大眾 機(jī)器人技術(shù)同時也使計算機(jī)科學(xué)更加實(shí)用、真切，更富于操作性和動作的迅捷。 計算機(jī)科學(xué)已經(jīng)失去了往日的感染力，然而機(jī)器人技術(shù)可以幫助它找回往日的輝煌。計算機(jī)似乎已經(jīng)侵占了我們生活的方方面面，但是機(jī)器人技術(shù)的研究似乎還處于若即若離的狀態(tài)。所以，為了重建兩者之間的聯(lián)系，個人教育機(jī)器人研究院正在研制一款個人使用的機(jī)器人，包括機(jī)器人本身、軟件、課程等 。這些均將用于幫助人們學(xué)習(xí)初步的計算機(jī)課程。課程融入了合適的教學(xué)哲學(xué)，使計算機(jī)的學(xué)習(xí)更加個人化。 誰應(yīng)該為現(xiàn)在沒有意思的計算機(jī)課程負(fù)責(zé)？好吧，我，還是其他什么人。計算機(jī)科學(xué)的教育一直被認(rèn)為是“學(xué)生的噩夢”，同樣被看做已經(jīng)不幸地成為老一套的好萊塢模式。雖然還有一些跡象表明計算機(jī)科學(xué)還是很不錯的學(xué)科，但是，從整體來說，更少的學(xué)生進(jìn)入計算機(jī)領(lǐng)域，因?yàn)槲覀円呀?jīng)把他移出了我們的課程。 更進(jìn)一步的說，很有可能，計算機(jī)科學(xué)缺乏魅力恰好反映了美國當(dāng)前的經(jīng)濟(jì)狀態(tài)。但是，如果你有看過過去二十年的數(shù)據(jù)，就會發(fā)現(xiàn)至少一些不變量通過 經(jīng)濟(jì)的繁榮和增長是不能解釋的。婦女和少數(shù)民族在計算機(jī)領(lǐng)域長期一來一直沒有足夠的代表。在過去的二十五年里，他們的數(shù)量一直領(lǐng)先。同時，根據(jù)位于洛杉磯的加利福尼亞大學(xué)高等教育研究中心的調(diào)查結(jié)果顯示，從 1998 年到 2004 年，計算機(jī)領(lǐng)域的婦女招收人數(shù)下降了百分之八十，從原來所占比例百分之一點(diǎn)五，到現(xiàn)在的百分之零點(diǎn)二五。這一趨勢和計算機(jī)科學(xué)在所有的學(xué)生中備受冷遇有關(guān)，這可以從持續(xù)下降的招收圖表中可以看到，同時也可以從高等教育研究中心看到。跟隨最近的一項(xiàng)關(guān)于計算機(jī)科學(xué)的屬性問題的研究，我們可以知道更多計算機(jī)科學(xué)在教學(xué)方 面的弱點(diǎn)，更加明顯地發(fā)現(xiàn)，對于教學(xué)的環(huán)境，學(xué)生們各執(zhí)一詞。例如：長期單獨(dú)一個人在實(shí)驗(yàn)室，糾纏于大量細(xì)微末節(jié)的東西，和許多學(xué)生的追求是大相徑庭的。如果計算機(jī)科學(xué)的教學(xué)能夠坦然面對這一事實(shí)，發(fā)展可以修復(fù)這一缺陷的教學(xué)理論，那么我們至少可以希望這一局面能夠慢慢得以改善。 最后，我和我在個人教育機(jī)器人研究院的同事們開始從事一項(xiàng)為期多年的工程，這項(xiàng)工程旨在編寫出新的計算機(jī)科學(xué)課程導(dǎo)論和相應(yīng)的教科書，使這門科學(xué)西北工業(yè)大學(xué)明德學(xué)院本科畢業(yè)設(shè)計論文 6 能夠更容易被人接受，從而激發(fā)所有的學(xué)生。課程的核心圍繞一個小的私人機(jī)器人，大約就一本平裝書那么大，我們暫時把它 命名為“陀螺”，我們希望每個同學(xué)都能花上一百五十美元在他們大學(xué)的書店里買到這個小機(jī)器人，并且使用它完成自己的計算機(jī)科學(xué)之旅。個人教育機(jī)器人研究院已經(jīng)接受了來自微軟研究中心的一百萬的補(bǔ)助金。發(fā)表于 2006 年 6 月。 首先，將機(jī)器人用于計算機(jī)科學(xué)的教學(xué)中聽起來似乎很奇怪。學(xué)計算機(jī)的學(xué)生在提起計算機(jī)的學(xué)習(xí)時，只會感到恐怖。有些人會想到，機(jī)器人的應(yīng)用只會使這一問題更加嚴(yán)重，而不是緩和矛盾。然而，計算機(jī)科學(xué)教學(xué)所存在問題的解決是刻不容緩的，刻意給學(xué)生分配的老套的例題，會嚴(yán)重影響到學(xué)生對計算機(jī)科學(xué)的理解和應(yīng)用。比如：一個 老師使用匯編語言來闡明一個概念時，其本身已經(jīng)切斷了計算機(jī)科學(xué)和生活的聯(lián)系。專門使用那些沒有血肉的教學(xué)例子就好像計算機(jī)科學(xué)家在學(xué)計算機(jī)。我們必須提供足夠的吸引力，以推動學(xué)生能理解和欣賞這門科學(xué)。 有了這件工藝品 一個機(jī)器人，它為教師和學(xué)生提供了內(nèi)在的學(xué)習(xí)動力，激發(fā)他們?nèi)ヌ剿饔嬎銠C(jī)背后的科學(xué)。到那個時候，學(xué)生們堅持學(xué)習(xí)計算機(jī)的原因?qū)喾N多樣，因?yàn)榕d趣、好奇心、或者是想在家人和朋友面前炫耀一下。設(shè)想一下一個學(xué)生寫了一個程序，運(yùn)行結(jié)果是五，但隨后他發(fā)現(xiàn)正