Celebrating 50 Years of 20 Things to do with a Computer
We are in the giving season and many of us thinking about great gifts for our family members and loved ones. As we consider what is new, fancy, and shiny, we should also consider what is classic, tested, and enduring. A great education, for example, is enduring. Fifty years ago, Cynthia Solomon and Seymour Papert wrote “20 Things to do with a Computer” as a way to spark our imaginations. One of the “things to do with a computer” pertinent to Music Blocks is number eleven, “Make a Music Box and Program a Tune”.
This article announces the publication of a new book that celebrates the original article written 50 years ago. For those interested in knowing more about the article, it offers some pertinent excerpts from the article. And, for those who may have read the article/book already, it also offers graphics and (live Music Blocks) links that are not in the published article. Please consider adding a comment and/or question below.
New Book Celebrates “20 Things to do with a Computer”
Walter Bender and I wrote a new article and it is now published as part of a new book! The book is called “20 Things to do with a Computer: Forward Fifty” by Gary S. Stager and Heather Allen Pang, with Foreword by Cynthia Solomon, with contributions by numerous educators. The book is now available for purchase.
Twenty Things to Do with a Computer Forward 50 can inspire parents, educators, and aspiring teachers to make the world a better place for learning.
The impact of Twenty Things is all around us. In 1971, Solomon and Papert predicted 1:1 personal computing, the maker movement, the rise of computational thinking, children programming computers, robotic construction kits, computer science for all, and integrating computing across the curriculum. All of this, years, or even decades, before such notions became more commonplace.
Twenty Things to do with a Computer Forward 50 Book Description on Amazon
Editor’s Note: No one affiliated with this website receives any of the book proceeds, whether your purchase from the above link or not. I am sharing the book’s publication because I think it is worth sharing with educators, parents, policy makers, and life-long learners. If I receive permission to publish our article directly from this website, then I will share here. Please enjoy!
#11 Make a Music Box and Program a Tune
The article Walter and I wrote focuses on #11 from the list of things to do with a computer, “Make a Music Box and Program a Tune”.
What is a Music Box?
According to the original article, “Twenty Things to do with a Computer”, a Music Box is “a device for making sound under control of a computer.” (See “Scratch vs. Music Blocks” article for more information about the language itself.) Above is a picture, taken by Cynthia Solomon, of Marvin Minsky with his original Music Box invention.
Program a Tune
I will admit when I started working with Walter on Music Blocks I was not familiar with “Twenty Things to do with a Computer” as well as its music box. However, when I did see the programming language for the music box, I was pleasantly surprised how similar Music Blocks is to the music box language.
As you can see by the two images above, the Music Blocks’ language has a very similar framework to music box. Now, years of development later, the language has expanded to include many more features such as key, meter, transposition, temperament, and more.
Try for yourself!
Follow the link below to try a version of Frere Jacques on Music Blocks that uses volume, synths (instruments), and transposition.
Why Music?
According to the original “Twenty Things to do with a Computer”, the music box is “an obedient orchestra that will play precisely whatever you describe to it”. This is certainly the case, and it is nice to have a machine that plays your musical creations. Music Blocks, like the music box, performs your musical code. However, Walter and I expound on this in our article. Below is an excerpt from the article.
Why music?
Enumerated by Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon as “thing to do” #11, music is used as an entry point for engaging in computational thinking. Computation and music share important concepts. And music, like computation, requires a person to think on an abstract level. Moreover, music has some benefits that the traditional computing pedagogy does not, including the potential to improve social-emotional skills.
“#11: Make a Music Box and Program a Tune” article excerpt as published in Twenty Things to do with a Computer Forward 50
Music is a fun way to engage people, and music has many similarities to computation. Below is a comparison of concepts in programming and music as published in our article.
Beyond the Computer: Teaching Artists
Music is a universal language. Leveraging music and music teachers has the potential to reach a global audience. Under-employed musicians, who are statistically proven to be highly educated and demographically diverse (National Endowment for the Arts, 2011a), are a global phenomenon, one that we leverage both in terms of mining latent skills and also filling a need for more diverse and engaging mentorship in computational thinking. Teaching Artists using Music Blocks will foster basic computer science skills and broaden public engagement in computer science in a large, diverse population that has been under-served by existing efforts for broadening participation in computer science and engage and enable a talented but under-employed group—music teachers—in fulfilling both pedagogical and societal needs.
“#11: Make a Music Box and Program a Tune” article excerpt as published in Twenty Things to do with a Computer Forward 50
Bringing the Music Blocks’ learning potential to schools, however, is not just a technical challenge. For students to benefit from learning music through coding requires skilled and thoughtful teachers. The human touch, human imagination, and mentor role-models are necessary to really unlock the potential that Music Blocks and its accompanying lesson plans has to offer.
“I love metronome” 
Devin instructs students at Kennedy 
Music engages youth. 
Devin leads a workshop in Japan
Currently, the only place where teaching artists are being seriously trained in a Music Blocks curriculum and deployed to schools and educational organizations is MAP Family Learning Center. They are currently in an initiative to expand the circle of participating teaching artists through a crowdfunding campaign to develop videos, featuring teaching artists, to accompany the Music Blocks lesson plans. The goal is collaboration with teaching artists to create a new music+code curriculum, leveraging computation in music, as well as to bring music to a more central role in today’s classroom.
Conclusion
Working on the article for Twenty Things to do with a Computer Forward Fifty was a great opportunity to reflect upon the work that the Music Blocks community has done over the past several years. It also provided an opportunity to consider how Music Blocks fits within the legacy of the Logo programming language and constructionism education.
Your turn!
I encourage you to explore the original “Twenty Things to do with a Computer” article as well as try one of the twenty things for yourself. (Tip: The 20th “thing to do” with a computer is something that anyone can do with a computer. And, of course, the 11th and others can be done with Music Blocks.)
Original Twenty Things to do with a Computer
Interested in reading the original article by Solomon and Papert? Download and read the original “Twenty Things to do with a Computer” from https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/5836. The section on music is pages 23-35.
