Tag Archives: cross-disciplinary computing

Using e-textiles to deliver equitable computing lessons and broaden participation

Post Syndicated from Katharine Childs original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/using-e-textiles-to-deliver-equitable-computing-lessons-and-broaden-participation/

In our current series of research seminars, we are exploring how computing can be connected to other subjects using cross-disciplinary approaches. In July 2022, our speakers were Professor Yasmin Kafai from the University of Pennsylvania and Elaine Griggs, an award-winning teacher from Pembroke High School, Massachusetts, and we heard about their use of e-textiles to engage learners and broaden participation in computing. 

Professor Yasmin Kafai illustrated her research with a wonderful background made up of young people’s e-textile projects

Building new clubhouses

The spaces where young people learn about computing have sometimes been referred to as clubhouses to relate them to the places where sports or social clubs meet. A computing clubhouse can be a place where learners come together to take part in computing activities and gain a sense of community. However, as Yasmin pointed out, research has found that computing clubhouses have also often been dominated by electronics and robotics activities. This has led to clubhouses being perceived as exclusive spaces for only the young people who share those interests.

Yasmin’s work is motivated by the idea of building new clubhouses that include a wide range of computing interests, with a specific focus on spaces for e-textile activities, to show that diverse uses of computing are valued. 

At Coolest Projects, a group of people explore a coding project.
A group of young people share their projects at Coolest Projects

Yasmin’s research into learning through e-textiles has taken place in formal computing lessons in high schools in America, by developing and using a unit from the Exploring Computer Science curriculum called “Stitching the Loop”. In the seminar, we were fortunate to be joined by Elaine, a computer science and robotics teacher who has used the scheme of work in her classroom. Elaine’s learners have designed wearable electronic textile projects with microcontrollers, sensors, LEDs, and conductive thread. With these materials, learners have made items such as paper circuits, wristbands, and collaborative banners, as shown in the examples below. 

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 Items created by learners in the e-textile units of work

Teaching approaches for equity-oriented learning

The hands-on, project-based approach in the e-textile unit has many similarities with the principles underpinning the work we do at the Raspberry Pi Foundation. However, there were also two specific teaching approaches that were embedded in Elaine’s teaching in order to promote equitable learning in the computing classroom: 

  1. Prioritising time for learners to design their artefacts at the start of the activity.
  2. Reflecting on learning through the use of a digital portfolio.  

Making time for design

As teachers with a set of learning outcomes to deliver, we can often feel a certain pressure to structure lessons so that our learners spend the most time on activities that we feel will deliver those outcomes. I was very interested to hear how in these e-textile projects, there was a deliberate choice to foreground the aesthetics. When learners spent time designing their artefacts and could link it to their own interests, they had a sense of personal ownership over what they were making, which encouraged them to persevere and overcome any difficulties with sewing, code, or electronics. 

Title: Process of making your project. Learner's reflection: One main challenge that I faced while making this project was setting up my circuit diagram. I had trouble setting up where all my lights were gonna be placed at, and I had trouble color coding where the negatives and positives would be at. I sketched about 6 different papers and the 6th page was the one that came out fine because all of the other ones had negative and positive crossings which was not gonna help the program work, so I was finally able to get my diagram correct.
Spending time on design helped this learner to persevere with problem-solving

My personal reflection was that creating a digital textiles project based on a set template could be considered the equivalent of teaching programming by copying code. Both approaches would increase the chances of a successful output, but wouldn’t necessarily increase learners’ understanding of computing concepts, nor encourage learners to perceive computing as a subject where everyone belongs. I was inspired by the insights shared at the seminar about how prioritising design time can lead to more diverse representations of making. 

Reflecting on learning using a digital portfolio

Elaine told us that learners were encouraged to create a digital portfolio which included photographs of the different stages of their project, examples of their code, and reflections on the problems that they had solved during the project. In the picture below, the learner has shared both the ‘wrong’ and ‘right’ versions of their code, along with an explanation of how they debugged the error. 

A student portfolio with the title 'Coding Challenge'. The wrong code is on the left-hand side and the right code is on the right. The student has included an explanation beneath the wrong code: This is the wrong code. The problem I had was that I was putting the semicolon outside of the bracket. But the revision I needed was putting the semicolon inside of the bracket. That problem was a hard one to see because it is a very minor problem and most people wouldn't have caught it.
A learner’s example of debugging code from their portfolio

Yasmin explained the equity-oriented theories underpinning the digital portfolio teaching approach. The learners’ reflections allowed deeper understanding of the computing and electronics concepts involved and helped to balance the personalised nature of their artefacts with the need to meet learning goals.

Yasmin also emphasised how important it was for learners to take part in a series of projects so that they encountered computing and electronics concepts more than once. In this way, reflective journalling can be seen as an equitable teaching approach because it helps to move learners on from their initial engagement into more complex projects. Thinking back to the clubhouse model, it is equally important for learners to be valued for their complex e-textile projects as it is for their complex robotics projects, and so portfolios of a series of e-textile projects show that a diverse range of learners can be successful in computing at the highest levels. 

Try e-textiles with your learners

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Science and nature models made with an RPF project

If you’re thinking about ways of introducing e-textile activities to your learners, there are some useful resources here: 

  • The Exploring Computer Science page contains all the information and resources relating to the “Stitching the Loop” electronic textiles unit. You can also find the video that Yasmin and Elaine shared during the seminar. 
  • For e-textiles in a non-formal learning space, the StitchFest webpage has lots of information about an e-textile hackathon that took place in 2014, designed to broaden participation and perceptions in computing. 
  • “3D LED science display with Scratch” is a project that combines using LEDs with science and nature to create a 3D installation. This project is from the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s “Physical computing with Scratch and the Raspberry Pi” projects pathway.

Looking forward to our next free seminar

We’re having a short break in the seminar series but will be back in September when we’ll be continuing to find out more about cross-disciplinary approaches to computing.

In our next seminar on Tuesday 6 September 2022 at 17:00–18:30 BST / 12:00–13:30 EST / 9:00–10:30 PST / 18:00–19:30 CEST, we’ll be hearing all about the links between computing and dance, with our speaker Genevieve Smith-Nunes (University of Cambridge). Genevieve will be speaking about data ethics for the computing classroom through biometrics, ballet, and augmented reality (AR) which promises to be a fascinating perspective on bringing computing to new audiences.

Sign up for the free seminar now

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Are you technocentric? Shifting from technology to people

Post Syndicated from Jane Waite original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/technocentrism-shifting-from-technology-to-people-computing-education-pratim-sengupta-research-seminar/

When we teach children and young people about computing, do we consider how the subject has developed over time, how it relates to our students’ lives, and importantly, what our values are? Professor Pratim Sengupta shared some of the research he and his colleagues have been working on related to these questions in our June 2022 research seminar.

Pratim Sengupta.
Prof. Pratim Sengupta

Pratim revealed a complex landscape where we as educators can be easily trapped by what may seem like good intentions, thereby limiting learning and excluding some students. His presentation, entitled Computational heterogeneity in STEM education, introduced me to the concept of technocentrism and profoundly impacted my thinking about the essence of programming and how I research it. In this blog post, particularly for those unable to attend this stimulating seminar, I give my simplified view of the rich philosophy shared by Pratim, and my fledgling steps to admit to my technocentrism and overcome it.

Our seminars on teaching cross-disciplinary computing

Between May 2022 and November 2022, we are hosting a new series of free research seminars about teaching computing in different ways and in different contexts. This second seminar of the series was well attended with participants from the USA, Asia, Africa, and Europe, including teachers, researchers, and industry professionals, who contributed to a lively and thought-provoking discussion.

Two teachers and a group of learners are gathered around a laptop screen.

Pratim is a learning scientist based in Canada with a long and distinguished career. He has studied how to teach computational modelling in K-12 STEM classrooms and investigates the complexity of learning. Grounded in working with teachers and students, he brings together computing, science, education, and social justice. Based on his work at Northwestern University, Vanderbilt University, and now with the Mind, Matter and Media lab at the University of Calgary, Pratim has published hundreds of academic papers over some 20 years. Pratim and his team challenge how we focus on making technological artefacts — code for code’s sake — in computing education, and refocuses us on the human experience of coding and learning to code.

What is technocentrism?

Pratim started the seminar by giving us an overview of some of the key ideas that underpin the way that computing is usually taught in schools, including technocentrism (Figure 1).

Pratim Sengupta's summary of technocentrism: device-centred approaches for pedagogy and computational design; ignores teaching, social and institutional infrastructures, cultural histories; transparency or universality of code as symbolic power; recursive methods for education research, experience measured by being folded back onto devices; leads to symbolic violence, misrecognition of experience, muting and omission of voices, affect and moral dimensions of experience.
Figure 1: The features of technocentrism, a way of thinking about how we teach computing, particularly programming (Sengupta, 2022). Click to enlarge.

I have come to a simplified understanding of technocentrism. To me, it appears to be a way of looking at how we learn about computer science, where one might:

  • Focus on the finished product (e.g. a computer program), rather than thinking about the people who create, learn about, or use a program
  • Ignore the context and the environment, rather than paying attention to the history, the political situation, and the social context of the task at hand
  • View computing tasks as being implemented (enacted) by writing code, rather than seeing computing activities as rich and complex jumbles of meaning-making and communication that involve people using chatter, images, and lots of gestures
  • Anchor learning in concepts and skills, rather than placing the values and viewpoints of learners at the heart of teaching 

Examples of technocentrism and how to overcome it

Pratim recounted several research activities that he and his team have engaged with. These examples highlight instances of potential technocentrism and investigate how we might overcome it.

In the first example research activity, Pratim explained how in maths and physics lessons, middle school students were asked to develop models to solve time and distance problems. Rather than immediately coding a potential solution, the researcher and teacher supported the learners to spend much time developing a shared perspective to understand and express the problems first. Students grappled with different ways of representing the context, including graphs and diagrams (see Figure 2). Gradually and carefully, teachers shifted students to recognise what was important and what was not, to move them toward a meaningful language to describe and solve the problems.

Research results from Pratim Sengupta showing students' graph designs and how much time they spent on various activities during the graphing task.
Figure 2: Two graphs from students showing different representations of a context, and a researcher’s bar chart representing how students’ shared understanding emerged over time (Sengupta, 2022). Click to enlarge.

In a second example research activity, students were asked to build a machine that draws shapes using sensors, motors, and code. Rather than jumping straight to a solution, the students spent time with authentic users of their machines. Throughout the process, students worked with others, expressing the context through physical movement, clarifying their thoughts by drawing diagrams, and finding the sweet spot between coding, engineering design, and maths (see Figure 3).

Research results from Pratim Sengupta showing images documenting a physical computing design activity and how learners explained their design.
Figure 3:  Students used physical movements and user guides to be with others and publicly share and experience the task with authentic users (Sengupta, 2022). Click to enlarge.

In a third example research activity, racial segregation of US communities was discussed with pre-service teachers. The predominately white teachers found talking about the topic very difficult at the beginning of the activity. To overcome this hesitancy, teachers were first asked to work with a simulation that modelled the process of segregation through abstracted dots (or computational agents), a transitional other. Following this hypothetical representation, the context was then recontextualised through a map of real data points of the ethnicity of residents in an area of the US. This kind of map is called a Racial Dot Map based on US census data. When the teachers were able to interpret the link between the abstracted dot simulation and the real-world data they were able to talk about racism and segregation in a way they could not do before. The initial simulation and the recontextualisation were a pedagogical tool to reveal racism and provide a space where students felt comfortable discussing their values and beliefs that would otherwise have remained implicit.

Pratim Sengupta explains a research activity with predominantly white pre-service teachers who learned to discuss racism and segregation through a transitional othering activity using maps and graphing census data.
Figure 4: To facilitate discussion of racial segregation, a simulation was used that bridges abstracted dots and real people, giving pre-service teachers a space to reflect on discrimination  (Sengupta, 2022). Click to enlarge.

My takeaways

Pratim shared four implications of this research for computing pedagogy (see Figure 5).

Pratim Sengupta presents the pedagogical implications of shifting from technocentrism to perspectival heterogeneity in education: code as utterances and intertext; heterogeneity and tranformation of representational genres, code lives in translation; teachers' voice needs to be centred in system and activity design and classroom work, researchers must listen; uncertainty and ambiguity play central roles, recognition takes time.
Figure 5: Pratim’s four implications for pedagogy. Click to enlarge

As a researcher of pedagogy, these points provide takeaways that I can relate to my own research practice:

  • Code is a voice within an experience rather than symbols at a point in time. For example, when I listen to students predicting what a snippet of code will do, I think of the active nature of each carefully chosen command and how for each student, the code corresponds with them differently.
  • Code lives as a translation bridging many dimensions, such as data representation, algorithms, syntax, and user views. This statement resonates deeply with my liking of Carsten Schultes’s block model [1] but extends to include the people involved.
  • We should listen carefully and attentively to teachers, rather than making assumptions about what happens in classrooms. Teachers create new ideas. This takeaway is very important and reminds me about the trust and relationships built between teachers and researchers and how important it is to listen.
  • Uncertainty and ambiguity exist in learning, and this can take time to recognise. This final point makes me smile. As a developer, teacher, and researcher, I have found dealing with ambiguity hard at various points in my career. Still, over time, I think I am getting better at seeing it and celebrating it. 

Listening to Pratim share his research on the teaching and learning of computing and the pitfalls of technocentrism has made me think deeply about how I view computer science as a subject and do research about it. I have shared some of my reflections in this blog, and I plan to incorporate the underlying theory and ideas in my ongoing research projects.

If you would like to find out more about Pratim’s work, please look over his slides, watch his presentation, read the upcoming chapter in our seminar proceedings, or respond to this blog by leaving a comment so we can discuss!

Join our next seminar

We have another four seminars in our current series on cross-disciplinary computing. 

At our next seminar on 12 July 2022 at 17:00–18:30 BST / 12:00–13:30 EDT / 9:00–10:30 PDT / 18:00–19:30 CEST, we will welcome Prof. Yasmin Kafai and Elaine Griggs, who are going to present research on introductory equity-oriented computer science with electronic textiles for high school students.

Sign up for the free seminar now

We look forward to meeting you there.

[1] You can learn more in the Hello World article where our Chief Learning Officer Sue Sentance talks about the block model.

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A teaspoon of computing in every subject: Broadening participation in computer science

Post Syndicated from Sue Sentance original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/guzdial-teaspoon-computing-tsp-language-broadening-participation-school/

From May to November 2022, our seminars focus on the theme of cross-disciplinary computing. Through this seminar series, we want to explore the intersections and interactions of computing with all aspects of learning and life, and think about how they can help us teach young people. We were delighted to welcome Prof. Mark Guzdial (University of Michigan) as our first speaker.

Mark Guzdial.
Professor Mark Guzdial, University of Michigan

Mark has worked in computer science (CS) education for decades and won many awards for his research, including the prestigious ACM SIGCSE Outstanding Contribution to Computing Education award in 2019. He has written literally hundreds of papers about CS education, and he authors an extremely popular computing education research blog that keeps us all up to date with what is going on in the field.

Young learners at computers in a classroom.

In his talk, Mark focused on his recent work around developing task-specific programming (TSP) languages, with which teachers can add a teaspoon (also abbreviated TSP) of programming to a wide variety of subject areas in schools. Mark’s overarching thesis is that if we want everyone to have some exposure to CS, then we need to integrate it into a range of subjects across the school curriculum. And he explained that this idea of “adding a teaspoon” embraces some core principles; for TSP languages to be successful, they need to:

  • Meet the teachers’ needs
  • Be relevant to the context or lesson in which it appears
  • Be technically easy to get to grips with

Mark neatly summarised this as ‘being both usable and useful’. 

Historical views on why we should all learn computer science

We can learn a lot from going back in time and reflecting on the history of computing. Mark started his talk by sharing the views of some of the eminent computer scientists of the early days of the subject. C. P. Snow maintained, way back in 1961, that all students should study CS, because it was too important to be left to a small handful of people.

A quote by computer scientist C. S. Snow from 1961: A handful of people, having no relation to the will of society, having no communication with the rest of society, will be taking decisions in secret which are going to affect our lives in the deepest, sense.

Alan Perlis, also in 1961, argued that everyone at university should study one course in CS rather than a topic such as calculus. His reason was that CS is about process, and thus gives students tools that they can use to change the world around them. I’d never heard of this work from the 1960s before, and it suggests incredible foresight. Perhaps we don’t need to even have the debate of whether computer science is for everyone — it seems it always was!

What’s the problem with the current situation?

In many of our seminars over the last two years, we have heard about the need to broaden participation in computing in school. Although in England, computing is mandatory for ages 5 to 16 (in theory, in practice it’s offered to all children from age 5 to 14), other countries don’t have any computing for younger children. And once computing becomes optional, numbers drop, wherever you are.

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Not enough students are experiencing computer science in school.

Mark shared with us that in US high schools, only 4.7% of students are enrolled in a CS course. However, students are studying other subjects, which brought him to the conclusion that CS should be introduced where the students already are. For example, Mark described that, at the Advanced Placement (AP) level in the US, many more students choose to take history than CS (399,000 vs 114,000) and the History AP cohort has more even gender balance, and a higher proportion of Black and Hispanic students. 

The teaspoon approach to broadening participation

A solution to low uptake of CS being proposed by Mark and his colleagues is to add a little computing to other subjects, and in his talk he gave us some examples from history and mathematics, both subjects taken by a high proportion of US students. His focus is on high school, meaning learners aged 14 and upwards (upper secondary in Europe, or key stage 4 and 5 in England). To introduce a teaspoon of CS to other subjects, Mark’s research group builds tools using a participatory design approach; his group collaborates with teachers in schools to identify the needs of the teachers and students and design and iterate TSP languages in conjunction with them.

Three teenage boys do coding at a shared computer during a computer science lesson.

Mark demonstrated a number of TSP language prototypes his group has been building for use in particular contexts. The prototypes seem like simple apps, but can be classified as languages because they specify a process for a computational agent to execute. These small languages are designed to be used at a specific point in the lesson and should be learnable in ten minutes. For example, students can use a small ‘app’ specific to their topic, look at a script that generates a visualisation, and change some variables to find out how they impact the output. Students may also be able to access some program code, edit it, and see the impact of their edits. In this way, they discover through practical examples the way computer programs work, and how they can use CS principles to help build an understanding of the subject area they are currently studying. If the language is never used again, the learning cost was low enough that it was worth the value of adding computation to the one lesson.

We have recorded the seminar and will be sharing the video very soon, so bookmark this page.

Try TSP languages yourself

You can try out the TSP language prototypes Mark shared yourself, which will give you a good idea of how much a teaspoon is!

DV4L: For history students, the team and participating teachers have created a prototype called DV4L, which visualises historical data. The default example script shows population growth in Africa. Students can change some of the variables in the script to explore data related to other countries and other historical periods.

Pixel Equations: Mathematics and engineering students can use the Pixel Equations tool to learn about the way that pictures are made up of individual pixels. This can be introduced into lessons using a variety of contexts. One example lesson activity looks at images in the contexts of maps. This prototype is available in English and Spanish. 

Counting Sheets: Another example given by Mark was Counting Sheets, an interactive tool to support the exploration of counting problems, such as how many possible patterns can come from flipping three coins. 

Have a go yourself. What subjects could you imagine adding a teaspoon of computing to?

Join our next free research seminar

We’d love you to join us for the next seminar in our series on cross-disciplinary computing. On 7 June, we will hear from Pratim Sengupta, of the University of Calgary, Canada. He has conducted studies in science classrooms and non-formal learning environments, focusing on providing open and engaging experiences for anyone to explore code. Pratim will share his thoughts on the ways that more of us can become involved with code when we open up its richness and depth to a wider audience. He will also introduce us to his ideas about countering technocentrism, a key focus of his new book.

I want to sign up for the next seminar

And finally… save another date!

We will shortly be sharing details about the official in-person launch event of the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre at the University of Cambridge on 20 July 2022. And guess who is going to be coming to Cambridge, UK, from Michigan to officially cut the ribbon for us? That’s right, Mark Guzdial. More information coming soon on how you can sign up to join us for free at this launch event.

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Exploring cross-disciplinary computing education in our new seminar series

Post Syndicated from Sue Sentance original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/cross-disciplinary-computing-education-research-seminars/

We are delighted to launch our next series of free online seminars, this time on the topic of cross-disciplinary computing, running monthly from May to November 2022. As always, our seminars are for all researchers, educators, and anyone else interested in research related to computing education.

An educator helps two learners set up a Raspberry Pi computer.

Crossing disciplinary boundaries

What do we mean by cross-disciplinary computing? Through this upcoming seminar series, we want to embrace the intersections and interactions of computing with all aspects of learning and life, and think about how they can help us teach young people. The researchers we’ve invited as our speakers will help us shed light on cross-disciplinary areas of computing through the breadth of their presentations.

In a computing classroom, a girl looks at a computer screen.

At the Raspberry Pi Foundation our mission is to make computing accessible to all children and young people everywhere, and because computing and technology appear in all aspects of our and young people’s lives, in this series of seminars we will consider what computing education looks like in a multiplicity of environments.

Mark Guzdial on computing in history and mathematics

We start the new series on 3 May, and are beyond delighted to be kicking off with a talk from Mark Guzdial (University of Michigan). Mark has worked in computer science education for decades and won many awards for his research, including the prestigious ACM SIGCSE Outstanding Contribution to Computing Education award in 2019. Mark has written hundreds of papers about computer science education, and he authors an extremely popular computing education research blog that keeps us all up to date with what is going on in the field.

Mark Guzdial.

Recently, he has been researching the ways in which programming education can be integrated into other subjects, so he is a perfect speaker to start us thinking about our theme of cross-disciplinary computing. His talk will focus on how we can add a teaspoon of computing to history and mathematics classes.

Pratim Sengupta on countering technocentrism

On 7 June, our speaker will be Pratim Sengupta (University of Calgary), who I feel will really challenge us to think about programming and computing education in a new way. He has conducted studies in science classrooms and non-formal learning environments which focus on providing open and engaging experiences for the public to explore code, for example through the Voice your Celebration installation. Recently, he has co-authored a book called Voicing Code in STEM: A Dialogical Imagination (MIT Press, availabe open access).

Pratim Sengupta.

In Pratim’s talk, he will share his thoughts about the ways that more of us can become involved with code through opening up its richness and depth to a wider public audience, and he will introduce us to his ideas about countering technocentrism, a key focus of his new book. I’m so looking forward to being challenged by this talk.

Yasmin Kafai on curriculum design with e-textiles

On 12 July, we will hear from Yasmin Kafai (University of Pennsylvania), who is another legend in computing education in my eyes. Yasmin started her long career in computing education with Seymour Papert, internationally known for his work on Logo and on constructionism as a theoretical lens for understanding the way we learn computing. Yasmin was part of the team that created Scratch, and for many years now has been working on projects revolving around digital making, electronic textiles, and computational participation.

Yasmin Kafai.

In Yasmin’s talk she will present, alongside a panel of teachers she’s been collaborating with, some of their work to develop a high school curriculum that uses electronic textiles to introduce students to computer science. This promises to be a really engaging and interactive seminar.

Genevieve Smith-Nunes on exploring data ethics

In August we will take a holiday, to return on 6 September to hear from the inspirational Genevieve Smith-Nunes (University of Cambridge), whose research is focused on dance and computing, in particular data-driven dance. Her work helps us to focus on the possibilities of creative computing, but also to think about the ethics of applications that involve vast amounts of data.

Genevieve Smith-Nunes.

Genevieve’s talk will prompt us to think about some really important questions: Is there a difference in sense of self (identity) between the human and the virtual? How does sharing your personal biometric data make you feel? How can biometric and immersive development tools be used in the computing classroom to raise awareness of data ethics? Impossible to miss!

Sign up now to attend the seminars

Do enter all these dates in your diary so you don’t miss out on participating — we are very excited about this series. Sign up below, and ahead of every seminar, we will send you the information for joining.

I want sign up to attend

As usual, the seminars will take place online on a Tuesday at 17:00 to 18:30 local UK time. Later on in the series, we will also host a talk by our own researchers and developers at the Raspberry Pi Foundation about our non-formal learning research. Watch this space for details about the October and November seminars, which we are still finalising.

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