[Yr7-10it] girls, IT, computer literacy
Costello, Rob R
Costello.Rob.R at edumail.vic.gov.au
Wed Apr 2 09:09:15 EST 2008
Hi Bill
while the educause paper analyses information fluency i don't think it precludes play / exploration as the means of developing it
it suggests project based learning, rotating roles, personal exploration - and cautions that while we need a strong "core" curriculum, just defining a "core" curriculum is like shipping apple cores around the country, hoping they will grow - the culture of how it is done is crucial; so play based explortation etc may be the way
the main point i take from the paper is that information literacy as "skill sets" is insufficent since they not deeply transferable to genuinely new problems - not enough enough staying power in the face of change
(from a blooms point of view - tends to limit us to "how to use")
however information fluency based on understanding of underlying concepts - however that is obtained - allows creative problem solving across a wider range of unfamiliar domains
i think we need a more rigourous core - but delivered in the spirit of VELS - depth rather than shallow breadth, and personalisation - not trying to get everyone to swallow standard computer science curriculum
but rasing the bar in terms of depth
here is one apple core
http://csta.acm.org/Curriculum/sub/ACMK12CSModel.html
cheers
rob
________________________________
From: yr7-10it-bounces at edulists.com.au on behalf of Bill Kerr
Sent: Tue 4/1/2008 3:06 PM
To: Year 7 - 10 Information Technology Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Yr7-10it] girls, IT, computer literacy
the educause paper from rob and the kindergarten learning paper from sarah have different approaches to the acquisiton of fluency
the educause paper tries to analyse and dissect what fluency is, step by step (cognitivist or conceptual approach)
the kindergarten learning paper regards it as something that arises from a cycle which involves imagine, create, play, share, reflect (constructionist approach)
IMO the kindergarten learning paper works - I'm not so sure about the educause approach. It might be true that that kids from disadvantaged backgrounds initially require more didactic input - that the play approach works well because middle class parents have already taught their kids lots of conceptual understandings
note this quote from the kindergarten learning paper:
Kindergarten is undergoing a dramatic change. For nearly
200 years, since the first kindergarten opened in 1837,
kindergarten has been a time for telling stories, building
castles, drawing pictures, and learning to share. But that is
starting to change. Today, more and more kindergarten
children are spending time filling out phonics worksheets
and memorizing math flashcards [5]. In short, kindergarten
is becoming more like the rest of school.
In my mind, exactly the opposite is needed: Instead of
making kindergarten like the rest of school, we need to
make the rest of school (indeed, the rest of life) more like
kindergarten.
Is he (Resnick) correct?
--
Bill Kerr
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/
On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 9:29 AM, Sarah Pulis <Sarah.Pulis at latrobe.edu.au> wrote:
Hi Kent and others,
It's fantastic to see discussion on girls and computing. We are few and far between, that is for sure!
Another tool that you may consider which combines simple programming concepts and the 'making something pretty' aspect is Scratch [1]. Scratch has been mentioned before on this list. It's really intuitive and easy for kids to pick up and is very versatile. Lots of projects online to give kids inspiration - you can make games, plays, animate your name in as many different ways as you can think off... and big kids can waste hours playing with it too (can you tell that is me?). And [2] is an interesting article about creative thinking and learning.
Just for your interesting, I am piloting an online mentoring program this year with a small number of schools that aims to encourage girls in secondary school to consider careers in Information Communication Technology (ICT). We hope that through the eMentoring program, students will be provided with insights into careers in ICT through interactions with graduates and current students. We hope the program will encourage students, particularly female students, to consider undertaking ICT at senior secondary and tertiary level.
Regards, Sarah.
[1] http://scratch.mit.edu/
[2] http://www.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/kindergarten-learning-approach.pdf <http://www.media.mit.edu/%7Emres/papers/kindergarten-learning-approach.pdf>
--
Sarah Pulis
Program Coordinator
Science Teachers' Assistance Program
Faculty of Science, Technology and Engineering
La Trobe University
Ph: 9479 1283
Fax: 9479 3060
www.latrobe.edu.au/scitecheng/stap
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If you would like to stay informed of new developments within STAP and be notified of upcoming education program and professional development opportunities, please subscribe to the STAP mailing list <http://www.latrobe.edu.au/scitecheng/stap/mailing-list.php> .
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From: yr7-10it-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:yr7-10it-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Kent Beveridge
Sent: Tuesday, 25 March 2008 3:37 PM
To: Year 7 - 10 Information Technology Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: RE: [Yr7-10it] girls, IT, computer literacy
Hey folks, it seems we are getting in a few meters deeper than I originally planned. I am not writing a thesis on girls in computing, just after some basic ideas on typical things that some 7/8/9/10 year level girls might like to do to increase their participation rate in the subject of IT.
Keep in mind here, that it is still a separate subject here and not integrated a la VELS into other disciplines. Also, my classes are all mixed sex so I dont have the luxury of all girls (or all boys) classes, the numbers just cant justify that yet.
Its nice to hear that lots of research has been done etc etc..but, the bottom line (and we all love a nice bottom line!) is, what will enthuse teenage girls into IT that can be started with a simple single session one lunchtime per week with basic software programs, the internet(filtered) and no PhD?
Kent.
Kent Beveridge,
I.T. co-ordinator
St. Brigids Catholic Sec. College
Horsham
email.. kbeveridge at stbc.vic.edu.au
|<3|\|7 b3\/3r1D93 ? ;-)
Wishes and Eggs, one you make and one you break! A bit like promises.....
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________________________________
From: yr7-10it-bounces at edulists.com.au on behalf of Bill Kerr
Sent: Tue 3/25/2008 2:59 PM
To: Year 7 - 10 Information Technology Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Yr7-10it] girls, IT, computer literacy
great resources - thanks rob
yes, I want to be part of this discussion group, when and if it is set up :-)
alan kay's material complements the turkle quote - she focuses on social relations being embedded in simulations; he focuses on how they are embedded in the user interface
insofar as we conceptualise computers as "mere tools" then they will continue to be used poorly in schools IMO - better to see them as interactive medium which either molds the user in its image (eg. an application or a GUI) or the user molds the machine, expresses themselves through the medium, including the ability to modify and develop aspects of the medium
--
Bill Kerr
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/
On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 12:00 PM, Costello, Rob R <Costello.Rob.R at edumail.vic.gov.au> wrote:
I sent something through yesterday re Kent's questions about girls in IT.
It hasn't appeared maybe because I added a largish attachment
Anyway, here's another link I found yesterday that might be of interest -
paper is sub titled : "Using the Storytelling Alice programming environment to create computer-animated movies inspires middle school girls' interest in learning to program computers."
www.thinkingcurriculum.com/alice.pdf
(having a student login at a uni opens up amazing journal resources over the web seems nearly all journals have been digitised back issues and all
Be worth schools having an account)
it talks about the overlap between animation and programming and the appeal in this approach appeals to me as well !
also a copy and paste of whats I sent yesterday :
Sherry Turkle did some pioneering work on computer cultures, gender, etc
I think it would be fair to describe her as a feminist orientated scholar;
She has some powerful arguments in favour of programming; and critiques of its general removal from school curriculum over the last 20 years
Here's an excerpt from the 20th anniversary edition of the "Second Self : Computers and the human spirit"
(in other work with Papert, they looked at how gender interacted with programming style and knowledge construction
I worked in a girls school for quite a while and agree with Rachel's observations about preferred activities
But seems pretty crucial to me that we offer programming in accessible forms and styles as well
(while I'm on that here's a review of introductory programming languages -
"Lowering the Barriers to Programming: A Taxonomy of Programming Environments and Languages for Novice Programmers"
looks at about 200 of them
http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/lowerbarrier.pdf
Turkle :
In The Second Self I report on my studies of children learning Logo. Their
styles of programming were varied and revealing. The computer, as I have
said, served as a Rorschach, and programming was one of the most powerful
manifestations of its projective power. Twenty years later, programming
is no longer taught much in standard classrooms, relegated for the
most part to special after-school computer clubs. These days, educators
most often think of computer literacy as the ability to use the computer
as an information appliance for such purposes as word processing, running
simulations, accessing educational CD-ROMs, navigating the Internet, and
using presentation software such as PowerPoint. But the question remains
whether mastery of these skills should be the goal of computer education.
Do they constitute computer literacy?
One unhappy seventh-grade teacher concurred,
"It's not my job to instruct children in the use of an appliance and then
to leave it at that." These teachers were struggling toward an argument for
a certain kind of "computational exceptionalism." It takes as a given that
people once knew how their cars, televisions, or telephones worked and
don't know this any more, but that in the case of mechanical technology,
such losses are acceptable. It insists, however, that ignorance about the fundamentals
of computation comes at too high a price. One teacher put it
this way: "Children know that the telephone is a mechanism and that they
control it. But it's not enough to have that kind of understanding about
the computer. You have to know how a simulation works. You have to
know what an algorithm is."
In the nearly ten years since I recorded these conversations, educational
advocates for computational transparency have, in large measure, lost their
battle. Educators who want to demystify the computer face a new generation
of children that no longer finds enough mystery in the machine to
care what an algorithm is. It is a generation that has made a transition
from the transparency of algorithm to the opacity of simulation. This generation
takes overland journeys along a simulated Oregon Trail and when
it plays The Sims or The Sims Online, it designs houses, personal histories,
and social engagements for the virtual citizenry. In The Second Self, when
I wrote of the "computer as Rorschach," it was programming that served
as the projective screen for personal and cultural differences. These days,
computation offers far more immediate projective media: one can create
multiple avatars in online communities and play with relationships, quite
literally using one's "second (or third, or fourth, of fifth) self."
I have suggested, in talking about Deborah, that on the level of the individual
child, something interesting has been lost in the move away from
authorship of the programs that underlie one's own game. On a societal
level, there is an analogous loss. The aesthetic of transparency (common
to the Logo movement and the early generations of personal computer
hobbyists) carried with it a political aesthetic that was tied both to authorship
and to knowing how things worked on a level of considerable detail.
This is a kind of understanding that is not communicated by playing
off-the-shelf simulations.
On one level, high school sophomores playing SimCity for two hours
may learn more about urban planning than they would from a textbook,
but on another level, they may not know how to think about what they
are doing. They "play" simulations but don't have a clear way to discriminate
between the rules of the game and those that operate in a real city.
Most have never programmed a computer or constructed their own simulations.
They do not have a language for talking about how one might
rewrite the rules of their games. So, for example, SimCity often gives players
the impression that raising taxes will lead to riots. But, of course, there is
a way to write the game so that increased taxes lead to an increase in health
services, productivity, and social harmony. In my view, citizenship in a
culture of simulation requires that you know how to rewrite the rules. You
need tools to measure, criticize, and judge every simulation. Today's
teenagers are comfortable as inhabitants of simulated worlds, but most
often, they are there as consumers rather than as citizens. To achieve full
citizenship, our children need to work with simulations that teach about
the nature of simulation itself.
Tim, who did not know how to program, worked in a complex system built by
others. Tim played his simulation software as though it were a video game,
moment to moment, with no understanding of the rules. Deborah was
nurtured by transparency; Tim's skill set was centered on the artful navigation
of opacity. His philosophy of play: "Don't let it bother you if you
don't understand. I just say to myself that I probably won't be able to
understand the whole game any time soon. So I just play it."6
Tim's method enabled him to accomplish a great deal in simulation
space. His comfort in his virtual world might serve him (not well, but adequately)
in the many possible careers that lay before him, careers in architecture,
law, business, medicine, or history. In all of these fields, dealing
with information increasingly entails the navigation of simulations of
other people's creation. However, as I meet professionals in all of these
fields who move easily within their computational systems and yet feel
constrained by them, trapped by their systems' unseen limitations and
unknown assumptions, I feel continued concern. Are the new generations
of simulation consumers reminiscent of people who can pronounce the
words in a book but don't understand what they mean? We come to
written text with centuries-long habits of readership. At the very least, we
have learned to begin with the journalist's traditional questions: Who,
what, when, where, why, and how? Who wrote these words, what is their
message, why were they written, and how are they situated in time and
place, politically and socially? The dramatic changes in computer education
over the past decades leave us with serious questions about how we
can teach our children to interrogate simulations in much the same spirit.
The specific questions may be different, but the intent needs to be the
same: to develop habits of readership appropriate to a culture of simulation.
These habits of readership are central to computer literacy and social
responsibility in the twenty-first century.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10515&mode=toc
(I've uploaded a few of these files sharing illustrate the amazing resources which are hidden from google just a little sample sharing of what's out there with journals and electronic access to a uni library - but I guess I will take them pretty soon )
More Turkle / Papert
http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/turklePapert.pdf
(no copyright here I would think there are various versions of this paper online in fact Paperts classic book MindStorms can be downloaded for free here
http://portal.acm.org/toc.cfm?id=SERIES11430&type=series&coll=ACM&dl=ACM
needs a free web registration but then gives you the whole book )
I'm in the middle of researching stuff this is the tip of the iceberg of whats out there
Cheers
Rob
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