Northview — To someone just passing by what everyone calls “the fishbowl” at Northview High School, it might have appeared for a few days that Danielle Heft’s Intro to Computer Science students were blowing off steam with a board game reminiscent of one that has been played for decades on television’s The Price is Right.
Close, but also so very much more.
Students were trying their hand at Turing Tumble, described by student Kelly Burke as “a probability simulator, something you can use to test different patterns. And coding is all about writing patterns,” she explained.
Writing the patterns, Kelly said, “is all trial and error. Once you know what each (colored peg piece) does, where you put them (on the peg board) becomes less random and more purposeful.”
The marble-powered activity was guest-taught by Byron DeVries, a professor from Grand Valley State University’s School of Computing.
“The (colored Turing) pieces correspond to digital logic,” DeVries said. “The patterns they’re creating tie to coding without ever talking about computers, without actually talking about theory. They’re just having fun.”
Said Heft: “It fits 100% with what the class is.”
DeVries was one of Heft’s professors when she was a student at GVSU, and both sit on the board of directors of Stemming Ideas, a newly formed STEM nonprofit aimed at middle- and high-school students.
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• Only way to fail is to give up
