[Yr7-10it] girls, IT, computer literacy

Tue Mar 25 15:37:05 EST 2008

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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