Media Computation is an approach to teach computer science and programming that uses media to motivate and contextualize learning. Students manipulate pixels of a picture and samples of a sound, to shift levels of abstraction in data and to see how algorithms abstract across data types. A short TEDxGT talk demonstrating Media Computation is available here: https://youtu.be/mGc6clf_Wt4
There are four Media Computation textbooks:
- Introduction to Computing and Programming in Python: A Multimedia Approach (Amazon link)
- Introduction to Computing and Programming in Java: A Multimedia Approach (Amazon link)
- Problem Solving with Data Structures using Java: A Multimedia Approach (Amazon link)
- Exploring Wonderland: Java Programming Using Alice and Media Computation (Amazon link)
Frontmatter (including Table of Contents) from 4ed Python intro book. Frontmatter-Python4ed-Proofs
Access to Jython Environment for Students (JES) releases, now in Version 6.0: https://github.com/gatech-csl/jes/releases
(Counts for JES downloads can be found here.)
Special version just to work with Mac OS X High Sierra and later: jes-5.mac02-snapshot-macosx
There are lots of ways to do Media Computation outside of Jython today. There’s a Python 3 version (see blog post here), and we’re using a teaspoon language and Snap in a class here at University of Michigan (see course page here).
The Media Computation website can be found here. The Python 4ed Errata website is here.