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SIGCSE Filk Circle: CS Parody Songs for Learning, Engagement, and Fun

Published: 21 February 2018 Publication History

Abstract

In a session with live music and collaborative parody, we celebrate the long tradition of computing parody songs ("filks") and their potential to contribute to education and a fun environment in CS courses. We perform several new and classic CS filks, such as "Like it Called on Me (QuickSort)" [1], interspersing discussion of how and why these parodies were written. We also propose a song for the audience to parody and walk them through a structured small-group activity to help them brainstorm topics and lyrical phrases and fit them to the existing lyrics and music. Attendees should expect to laugh (and possibly cry) with the singing and to leave inspired to incorporate filks and other creative activities into their computing education practice: playing, performing, or writing songs themselves, and encouraging their students to do so as well.

References

[1]
S. Wolfman, S. Bradley, R. Pottinger, N. Wolfman and C. S. 320 2016W2 TA Staff, "Like It Called on Me (QuickSort)," 5 April 2017. {Online}. Available: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~wolf/songs/like_it_called_on_me_quicksort.html. {Accessed 31 August 2017}.
[2]
B. Schreiber and J. P. Dougherty, "Assessment of introducing algorithms with video lectures and pseudocode rhymed to a melody," in 48th Annual Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Technical Symposium, Seattle, WA, USA, 2017.
[3]
E. V. Siegel, "Why Do Fools Fall Into Infinite Loops: Singing To Your Computer Science Class," in 4th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, Cracow, 1999.
[4]
J. G. L. Steele, "THE TELNET SONG: ("Control-Uparrow Q.")," Commun. ACM, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 347--348, 1984.
[5]
V. Sazawal, K. Yasuhara and N. Spring, "Educational Materials to Assist in Instruction of Information Hiding Basics," 10 May 2002. {Online}. Available: https://www.cs.umd.edu/~nspring/papers/ease-of-change.ps. {Accessed 31 August 2017}.
[6]
D. J. Barrett, "Find the Longest Path," 14 January 2010. {Online}. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3ww0gwEszo. {Accessed 31 August 2017}.
[7]
J. Coulton, Code Monkey, 2006.
[8]
J. P. Dougherty, "Computational Singing. Retrieved from," {Online}. Available: https://goo.gl/CpphJd. {Accessed 31 August 2017}.
[9]
S. D. Sandys, "The Red-Black Tree Song," 1995. {Online}. Available: http://webhome.csc.uvic.ca/~ruskey/classes/326/TreeSong.html. {Accessed 1 September 2017}.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    SIGCSE '18: Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
    February 2018
    1174 pages
    ISBN:9781450351034
    DOI:10.1145/3159450
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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    Published: 21 February 2018

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    1. filks
    2. music
    3. parodies
    4. singing

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    SIGCSE '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 161 of 459 submissions, 35%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 1,595 of 4,542 submissions, 35%

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