Welcome

This is the official website for "Computational Thinking through Modular Sound Synthesis." This book will teach you computational thinking through modular sound synthesis (hereafter modular). You'll learn how to trigger sounds, create sounds, and modify sounds to solve specific sound design problems and create compositions. Along the way, you'll learn computational thinking practices that transcend modular and can be applied to a variety of problem-solving domains, but which are particularly relevant to information processing domains like computing.

If you're wondering whether this is a book about computational thinking, or a book about modular, the answer is both: on the surface, most content is about modular, but computational thinking is a style of thinking reflected in the presentation of the material and gives it additional coherence. As you work through the book, you'll become more proficient in computational thinking practices like decomposition, algorithmic design, evaluation of solutions, pattern recognition, and abstraction.

This book is interactive, which is why it is best read as an online book. Throughout you will encounter examples, simulations, and exercises that run in your browser to demonstrate and reinforce key concepts. Don't skip the interactive activities! If you need to access the book offline, I've also created PDF and EPUB versions. Interactive activities in the PDF and EPUB versions are hyperlinked from captions, so you will need to be online to access them.

The recommended browser is Firefox on a non-iOS system. The modular software embedded in the book has a large download (100+ MB), and Firefox will cache the files so you only download them once. Other browsers will make you download them every time, which slows things down. And iOS browsers won't work at all.¹ Currently the embedded modular software is not mobile-friendly, so small screens and touch interfaces are not recommended.

This website is free to use and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants 1918751 and 1934745 and by the Institute of Education Sciences under Grant R305A190448. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Institute of Education Sciences.

1 Introduction