SIGCSE Need A Teaching Framework: Hire a Science Fiction Author?

Just following up on the Science Fiction panel that I mention earlier, I had the opportunity to listen to, and later share excellent Japanese food with, Mike Richards from the Open University, UK. One of the things he mentioned at the SF panel was that they had used an SF writer, Cory Doctorow, to write a story that incorporated exactly the kind of elements that they wanted into a story. This was used for, correct me if I’m wrong, Mike, “TU100: MY Digital Life”, with a paper that you can find on Mike’s webpage.

I think this is both novel and exciting. We can all see the value of having an engaging framework, but how many of us would think about retaining a creator from this particular discipline in order to produce exactly the right material from the start? (Of course, we’ve already seen examples of customised musical work and video with support materials from the CS Unplugged people, so what I’m really saying is that I hadn’t mapped this in this way. Wake up, Brain!)

Another way of thinking and another tool to add to the box – this is proving to be a great conference