Twoville Limerick
In October, a collaborator and I presented a poster on our 2D vector graphics languages at FabLearn 2020. The session started with everyone in the main Zoom room. Each presenter had 30 seconds to introduce their project, and then the crowd dispersed to individual breakout rooms.
Ever since I saw someone preview their paper with a foot-stomping fiddle routine at IEEE Visualization, I’ve tried to find my own ways to stand out during these lightning sessions. Limericks are more my style, and I wrote this one for FabLearn.
With a mouse you can do quite a lot
You can click on the shapes you have wrought
Drag them left, drag them right
Change their width, change their height
Do whatever the software’s been taughtWhat if you want to do other things?
Perhaps make Papert’s gears or some springs
Using math, using n
Doing once, then again
You need power that programming bringsWe know making takes both brains and heart
We need tools that don’t keep them apart
Let’s have code, let’s have clicks
Since design is a mix
Today’s demo we think is a start
We had a few visitors, but not many. Maybe the limerick was bad. Other explanations are possible: we were right in the middle of a long list of breakout rooms, people smelled my fear, or educators are burned out on new apps that claim to save education. Who knows.