I don’t know if it will get accepted, but I proposed a presentation for the Computer Science Teachers Association conference in July. I pitched a 3-hour workshop, thinking that most of the fun is in actually trying it out and making your own music!
Any suggestions from people who have presented on Sonic Pi? I’m not the best at it, but by July I’ll definitely be better! I’m hoping that we can make some inroads in the field of creative computing with this particular audience.
Hi @birv2,
hope you’ll get it. I always find it very enlightening to teach what I want to learn yourself. And as you said, much time until then. I am very sure you’ll be fine.
It is probably a good idea to engage people as early as possible, to let them do something instead of just listening or watching. I made good experiences with ‘pair-programming’ meaning I encourage my students to sit in front of one laptop, one being the driver and the other the navigator (and change of course after some time). That is mostly enough to get them going. Then I have time to look around and help if I can.
Thanks for the encouragement, Martin. I’m watching the vid of your Sonoj preso and stealing ideas left, right, and center! It’s really good!
My proposal is for a 3-hour workshop, so I am planning for lots of time for people to “play”. So yes, brief intro’s of topics, then playtime for people to work on implementing them.
I am neither a fulltime musician or programmer, but I can (sort of) speak both “languages”. I liked how you said that you don’t like confusing code!
I’ll know in the next month or two if the proposal is accepted.
Thanks again!
Thanks for the encouragement, Martin. I’m watching the vid of your Sonoj preso and stealing ideas left, right, and center! It’s really good!
Update: I’m the OP, and I did get the go-ahead to do my 3-hour workshop on Sonic Pi at CSTA next summer. CSTA is Computer Science Teachers’ Association. So I’m working through Sam’s excellent online tutorial to get up to speed.
I’m also interested in any other suggestions people might have for background reading/learning. Since it’s for CS teachers, I want to make sure I’ve got the codey stuff pretty well covered. Though my personal slant is that it’s just an awesome tool for making cool music and doing live coding. I lean towards IDM, electronica, house, techno, etc. in what I like to create. The fun thing for me is making music with code!