This Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) supports a pilot study at New York University (NYU), under which computer science (CS) is being taught to math and music savvy children in grades 7-12. They are learning how CS principles apply to music, a technical field with known computational applications including sound manipulation, music information retrieval, and musicrelated artificial intelligence. The focus is on fundamental scientific concepts like algorithms and data structures and how they apply to technical problems. This contrasts with previous approaches to teaching pre-college CS, e.g., AP computer science classes focus on a currently popular computer language (JAVA) and other classes focus on currently popular computer applications (word processing, spreadsheets, etc.). Follow up studies are anticipated for teaching other computational domains, such as robotics and artificial intelligence approaches to solving games. Again, the focus will be on formal computational problem solving, rather than the use of currently popular computer languages and applications. This study explores the incorporation of basic CS into the middle/high school curricula, a significant question for the educational and scientific research communities. The ubiquitousness of computational thinking in current intellectual thought makes this an extremely significant line of research. The teaching materials created in this pilot study will be available on the world wide web and results will be submitted for publication. This pilot study is intended as a stepping stone to a real computer science curriculum for pre-college students, which should prove essential to the future economic and intellectual development of the United States.
