Functions in Fiction
While math is the most powerful and pure of all science languages, its more worldly cousin computer programming produces poetry of dizzying beauty and complexity. Yet not all learners arrive equipped to read the efficiency in an algorithm, the ingenuity of an escape condition or the flexibility in a protocol. StoryCode uses the human dramas in fiction as schematics of programming structures and behaviors, allowing learners to translate the narrative language they already know into that of the machine.
Personifying the Abstract
We remember that moment when the code on the screen first came to life, when at last we could visualize the flow of information and action throughout a program's lines and symbols. In order for learners to experience that epiphany, so many concepts -- logic, variables, functions -- must become meaningful, personal, internalized. StoryCode gives you texts that humanize all these elements, with characters enacting algorithms, subplots unrolling iterations, story structure modeling data structure.
A Language to Share It All
Because it is rooted in stories about people, StoryCode makes programmers of those who might otherwise shy away from soulless machines. Enthusiastic coders, on the other hand, learn to share and talk about their abstract creations in a broadly accessible, human context. By building these bridges between humanities and science, StoryCode models how learning and intelligence are properly founded upon both.
There are different ways to bring StoryCode to your classes:
StoryCode Workshops
Learn to Develop Digital Metaphors.
StoryCode workshops feature exciting short stories, novels and films that become metaphors for computer and programming operations. From simply personifying hardware components to reading a novel as an object-oriented program, participants learn to frame mathematical concepts within dramatic, interpersonal contexts, multiplying their interest and relevance. After building this perspective in focused classroom sessions, participants explore and define a spectrum of software projects that can demonstrate both learner understanding and individual creativity.
StoryCode workshops range in length from 2 and a half hours to 5 days and can be configured to your specific needs.
The StoryCode Curriculum
A Fusion of Fiction and Computer Science
The lesson and unit plans, content guide, classroom handouts, evaluation rubrics and reading and viewing selections of StoryCode make up a year long course of study in digital fundamentals and several programming environments and languages. Though StoryCode's engaging texts are chosen to model particular sets of programming concepts, their chapters offer numerous opportunities to review, reinforce and deepen a range of vital mathematical and scientific understandings.
While each unit of the curriculum is detailed in terms of both content and delivery, training is available for portions or all of it.