Double Entry 7

"High Tech Programmers in Low-Income Communities: Creating a Computer Culture in a

Community Technology Center"

Yasmin B. Kafai, Kylie A. Peppler, & Grace M. Chiu

University of California, Los Angeles

1. Why should programming be part of school curriculum?

" Through our observations

at the Computer Clubhouse, we found that youth have an interest in

videogames, music videos, cartoon animations, and interactive, designbased

art, which are a natural springboard into creating and programming."

This qoute sums up the culture that students are growing in.  If their interests are on videogames, music videos, cartoon animations and interactive art then it would stand to reason that programming would be a valuable tool for these students to obtain.  I know in my own classes, particularly my music appreciation classes, we discuss classical music from the Romantic period, I ask the students to compare the historical and musical facts from those periods with something that they encounter in their musical lives today.  It seems to work well because they can attach the knowledge and musical ideas that I want them to obtain with something they are familar with.  They can relate that just because this style of music was well before their time, it has had a big impact on what they like to listen to today.  If they enjoy music today they need to realize that it is in large part thanks to what was pioneered in earlier periods of music.  I believe that the students would benifit more strongly with some type of programming available to further the connection with the past. 

2. What are the barriers to implementing programming in schools? 

"Realizing that simply providing access to programming

software would be insufficient, we created opportunities for

Clubhouse members to interact with adult mentors who were learning to

program as well (Kafai et al., in press)."

This to me sums up the main barrier of implementing programming in schools.  It is not just enough to have the tools available to work on programming.  When introduced to new content the students often feel as abrehensive about it as teachers.  If teachers join in with students and show them that learning new material doesn't have to be frightening and that part of the learning process is discovering failures.  In today's society students, in my opinion, get the idea that failure is not an option and that everyone should succeed.  Everyone gets a trophy no matter the outcome.  Without failure we cannot learn from mistakes and thus students and teachers tend to repeat those failures.

3. How can barriers to implementing  programming in schools be overcome?

"For instance, normative and political structures in public schools are much

more institutionalized than in most CTCs."

The barriers to implementing anything in a school is the institution.  I myself have trouble accessing basic information on the internet because of the stringent blocks placed on the web.  If I find something that would be valuable I have to submit it to the county Technology director to get it approved before it can be unblocked.  Programs encounter the same problem, and are often more so turned down in large part due to monetary concerns.  If the monetary concerns are moot, such as with a free program, then you have to jump through hoops to show how and why the program would be valuable to your classroom.  Several teachers in my county just give up before starting the process because it can be time consuming.

Double Entry #6

Collaboration, Computation, and Creativity:

Media Arts Practices in Urban Youth Culture
by: Kylie A. Peppler, Yasmin B. Kafai

1. "Researchers interested in computer-supported collaborative learning have paid little attention to the field of arts and design education as the more prominent focus has been on science, mathematics and to a lesser degree, social studies and language arts."

   I completely agree with this assessment of the direction that most computer supported learning has been driven.  The main reason for this trend, in my opinion, has been standardized testing, and the amount of emphasis test results have been given.  My favorite line is one from Mr Holland's Opus where Richard Dreyfuss says if the arts are taken out of schools the students won't have anything to read or write about.  This article touches on that concept throughout, with the focus being on how, through creative endevours of a student whose reading level is low, could be helped by allowing the student to be creative through expression and art work.

2. "Commonly, this group of scholars posits that literacy is best understood as a set of social practices, which can be inferred from events and mediated by written, visual, and other types of texts (Barton & Hamilton, 2000)."

   I found this quote interesting in the fact that it is now being recognized that literacy is not just written word and printed word.  Literacy has evolved to include social practices that use other mediums of communication.  Any teacher who does not see at least one cell phone or other mobile device of some kind, where the students are either texting, twittering, facebooking, or some other form of social mediaing, has gone through the day with their eyes closed.  I witnessed students who could not write a coherent sentence if it bit them on the butt.  THose same students could take a cell phone and through shorthand texting, write those coherent sentences.  They understand that new medium of language better than standard English.

3. "Computation is also a learned skill that becomes useful as youth, even those like Brandy that are unable to read, can use for creative production."

   This quote goes along with the previous one, in that even though Brandy's reading level had not improved, she was able to express herself through other mediums, and become quite successful at it.  Through her successes it might be found that the likelyhood for improvement in her other academic areas also improves.  I believe that once a student has found something in which they enjoy and are successful at, their other studies are generally positively affected.  For example, some students choose to stay in school for one reason or another.  IF they were not privey to that reason they would have dropped out and become nothing more than a statistic. 

Scratch Game Idea

The idea I have for scratch is of course centered around music.  I am currently working on a unit of composers from the Baroque to the Romantic Eras in my Music Appreciation class.  My thought was in order to make the learning of historical figures more interesting, I should make those figures more interactive.  Choosing a composer to focus on from each era would limit the number of sprites, as well as give me opportunity to have more "space" to work with.  THe part I'm having trouble is deciding what to have these figures do in order to make it a game.  One thought was to have the player be a seperate figure that is trying to "Study" from these influential figures.  THey would then be posed questions where they have to choose the composer that the question corresponds to.  If they answer correctly, they may continue in the game, if not they are relegated to some other musical source to get the answer?