trevordayschool

The Evolution of Computer Science at Trevor Day School: A Case Study in Inquiry-Based Learning by Eric Lindow, Upper School Computer Science & Mathematics Teacher, Senior Technology Advisor 1966: The Deep Roots T his story begins in the winter of 1966, well before I knew anything about the institution that is now Trevor Day School. In fact, I was a student myself, a junior in high school on Long Island. After we returned from the holiday break, my chemistry teacher announced to the class that the school would—for a limited time—have access to a mainframe computer system via a remote terminal located in one of the science department prep rooms. While no formal classes or instruction were going to be offered (I suspect because there was nobody at my school who knew anything about this system), students were invited to come in to experiment with this hardware and see what, if anything, they could get it to do. As someone who had been building electronic kits for years (does anyone remember Heathkit?), I was more than a little intrigued. e option of checking out this hardware instead of pretending to do homework in a quiet study hall was a no-brainer. For the next couple of months, I spent most of my limited free time during the school day working with that equipment. As best I recall, I received virtually no training on how to use the system, and for the most part, I worked on my own, using the mimeographed manual. (Mimeograph is a duplicator for making many copies that utilizes a stencil through which ink is pressed; it preceded photocopy technology.) By pretty much any standards, the system was difficult and frustrating. ere was a local machine where you typed in a set of commands based on what was in the manuals. e local machine then converted what you typed into a paper tape by punching holes in the appropriate pattern. You then fed the tape into the teleprinter machine (an electromechanical device used to send, receive, and print messages) that connected to the actual mainframe computer. After a while, the machine would read the tape, and then, when the mainframe had some spare cycles to give, it would digest the list of commands. If luck prevailed, it would print out (at about ten characters per second) what you wanted, but far more often, you would receive an error message—sometimes just a typo, sometimes something super- cryptic—and then you would have to fix your errors, retype everything, and go through the cycle again. Inquiry-based Learning: a student-centered teaching method that encourages students to ask questions and investigate real-world problems. 1 Despite these frustrations, I came to love working on that system, and, bit by bit, I got it to return actual meaningful results. My biggest accomplishment (and a source of great pride and joy) was a program that used successive iterations to calculate mathematical limits to a user-specified accuracy level for values for a given function. In other words, I automated a trial-and-error process to approach a target result within a given accuracy. Nerdy, I know, and nowadays rather trivial, but in 1966…with no handheld calculators—just pencil and paper or slide rules—I thought it was pretty cool. About the time I got the above program working, the funding ran out for the mainframe, the equipment vanished, and I was back in study hall. It is important to note that during the whole time I worked with that system, I wasn't in a class; nobody was formally teaching me or judging/ grading how well I was doing. e teachers who knew what I was up to were encouraging and helpful (when they could be), but there was never much in the way of formal evaluation of what I did by anyone but me, both during and afterwards. As far as my transcript, college applications, etc., it was as if it never happened. 1 Source - What Is Inquiry-Based Learning: A Complete Overview | SplashLearn 2 8 T R E V O R D AY S C H O O L n S U M M E R 2 0 2 1 – 2 0 2 2

• Cover