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

[Bill Kerr]

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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