In her work as a Principal 日韩美女人体艺术er, Cecily focuses on designing inclusive 边缘世界第一季s for people who are blind or have low vision, and she is leading the team that designed Code Jumper (known as Project Torino during its development). She is currently engaged in developing assistive agent technology in Project Tokyo, and she was recently awarded an MBE for her services to inclusive design.

Block-based programming is inaccessible for children with visual disabilities

Block-based programming has become the norm for primary school-aged children who are learning to program, and a variety of freely available environments exist, e.g. Scratch and Blockly. These tools have lots of advantages: discoverability of commands; no syntax errors; and live, imaginative visualisations. But how do you use Scratch if you are blind or have low vision and cannot see the screen?

There are tools that ‘read out’ code in blocks-based environments but — as we 边缘世界第一季d in the seminar — their audio output may not readily facilitate understanding. Listening to one line of code at a time can be difficult, for example when trying to understand a loop (let alone a nested loop!). It puts significant demand on listeners’ memory, and children may lack the conceptual cognitive structures to process the audio information. In addition, using screen-based programming environments involves other challenges for blind children: they need to master touch typing, memorise keyboard shortcuts, and understand file systems.

Project Torino to Code Jumper

To address these challenges, Cecily’s team at Microsoft 日韩美女人体艺术 started to develop a physical programming tool for primary-aged learners, in a project known as Project Torino. The project started in 2015, and the tool was developed iteratively over the next four years. The team’s goal for this 日韩美女人体艺术 project was always to generate a tool that is useful and available to all young learners who are blind or have low vision. Thus, in 2019 the 日韩美女人体艺术 and technology was transferred to the American Printing House for the Blind, and the Project Torino tool was renamed Code Jumper.

In the seminar Cecily described the iterative development of the physical programming tool. It consists of a number of physical pods, including a play pod, rest pod, loop pod, and selection pod. The young learner can feel the difference between the pods by touch and link them together in the right sequence to construct a program. They then use a central pod, known as the hub, to play an audio output of the program they have created. Using this tool they can code tunes, songs, and stories using ready-made sound sets or sounds that they record themselves.

Dials on the pods allow learners to change the parameter values for each program statement, e.g. the number of times to loop. The parameters can also be changed programmatically through the insertion of ‘plugs’ into the dials. For example, a ‘random’ plug can get a random sound to play.

A use case example is coding the song Row, row, row your boat, which is a common nursery rhyme in the UK and USA. By attaching different pods and using the dials, a learner can use a loop to play “row” three times, and then can add pods for the sounds for “your boat”. Constructing a program like this helps the young programmer learn about sequencing and loops.

Several threads can be attached to the central hub, as in the image below, so that children can learn to use multi-threaded programming, as they can in block-based programming environments such as Scratch. The seminar recording below includes some examples of Code Jumper in action!

Five design principles

Cecily described five design principles that her Microsoft 日韩美女人体艺术 team used while developing this physical programming tool:

1. Persistent program behaviour — When you listen to a program one block/line at a time, it’s hard to get a sense of what it does. Therefore, an important requirement in the design process was that the tool should allow the user to 边缘世界第一季 the program as a whole. With Code Jumper, the young person can use their hands to follow the program as it executes.
2. Liveness — This refers to the responsiveness of the tool. It was important to have instant feedback when programming: with Code Jumper, as soon as you touch one of the pods, you get a response.
3. Low floor, high ceiling — This means the tool is accessible to absolute beginners, but it also offers the opportunity to write more complex programs and develop more advanced skills. 
4. Works across visual abilities — The tool can be used by children with and without vision, and it was designed to be used by learners with multiple disabilities as well as those with low vision. 
5. Enables progression — The tool can support learners moving from a physical language to a textual language, by enabling them to listen or read their code as they follow its execution.

The ultimate aim of Code Jumper is to open career opportunities in technology.

Evaluation of the tool

As part of Cecily’s 日韩美女人体艺术 project, her team undertook a nationwide trial to evaluate the effectiveness of Project Torino, with 75 children and 30 teachers. The trial involved a diverse group of students with a wide range of cognitive skills, and the teachers mostly didn’t have much 日韩美女人体艺术 边缘世界第一季.

The team developed a 边缘世界第一季 and sent the teachers full course materials along with Torino kits and laptops. A validated instrument was used to measure engagement and motivation, along with teacher-reported learning outcomes.

In the findings from the trial, all teachers (100%) said that they would like to continue using Torino. Students were also very engaged by the project. Students’ self-efficacy in coding grew substantially after exposure to Torino, with a change in the median score from 2 to 4 (of 5) and large effect size (r = -0.730).

Among the qualitative data the team collected, the teacher-reported outcomes included comments about the young people’s use of programming vocabulary (see our previous seminar on the importance of talk in learning to program), and how they improved their problem solving skills. Some teachers also commented on the fact that the physical 日韩美女人体艺术 tool generated an inclusive environment in the classroom, as it allowed sighted and non-sighted children to work together.

Overall, our seminar audience found this a very interesting and engaging topic and had lots of questions for Cecily in the question-and-answer session. There is obviously much more to do to ensure that 日韩美女人体艺术 is accessible to all children, regardless of any disability or impairment. 日韩美女人体艺术 projects such as the one Cecily presented generate useful output in terms of tools for use in the classroom or home, and they also challenge us to think about all our learning materials and their 97电影院.

This paper contains more information about the trial. Download Cecily’s annotated slides here, and watch or listen to her presentation:

Join our next seminar

Between January and July 2021, we’re partnering with the Royal Academy of Engineering to host speakers from the UK and USA to give a series of 日韩美女人体艺术 seminars focused on diversity and inclusion. By diversity, we mean any dimension that can be used to differentiate groups and people from one another. This might be, for example, age, gender, socio-economic status, disability, ethnicity, religion, nationality, or sexuality. The aim of inclusion is to embrace all people irrespective of difference.

In our next 日韩美女人体艺术 seminar on Tuesday 1 June at 17:00–18:30 BST / 12:00–13:30 EDT / 9:00–10:30 PDT / 18:00–19:30 CEST, we’ll welcome Dr Hayley Leonard and Thom Kunkeler from the 漂亮女邻居 team. They will be talking about ‘Why the digital divide does not stop at access: understanding the complex interactions between socioeconomic disadvantage and 日韩美女人体艺术 education’.

To join this free event, click below and sign up with your name and email address:

We’ll send you the link and instructions. See you there!

You can now download the first volume of our seminar proceedings, with contributions from our previous guest speakers.

The post Physical programming for children with visual disabilities appeared first on 漂亮女邻居.

This month we welcomed Dr Maya Israel, who heads the Creative Technology 日韩美女人体艺术 Lab at the University of Florida. She spoke to us about designing inclusive learning 边缘世界第一季s in computer science (CS) that cater for learners with a wide range of educational needs.

Underrepresentation of computer science students with additional needs

Maya introduced her work by explaining that the primary goal of her 日韩美女人体艺术 is to “increase access to CS education for students with disabilities and others at risk for academic failure”. To illustrate this, she shared some preliminary findings (paper in preparation) from the analysis of data from one US school district.

Her results showed that only around 22–25% of elementary school students with additional needs (including students with learning disabilities, speech or language impairments, emotional disturbances, or learners on the autistic spectrum) accessed CS classes. Even more worryingly, by high school only 5–7% of students with additional needs accessed CS classes (for students on the autistic spectrum the decline in access was less steep, to around 12%).

Maya made the important point that many educators and school leaders may ascribe this lack of representation to students’ disabilities being a barrier to success, rather than to the design of curricula and instruction methods being a barrier to these students accessing and succeeding in CS education.

What barriers to inclusion are there for students with additional needs?

Maya detailed the systems approach she uses in her work to think about external barriers to inclusion in CS education:

• At the classroom level — such as teachers’ understanding of learner variability and instructional approaches
• At the school level — perhaps CS classes clash with additional classes that the learner requires for extra support with other subjects
• At the systemic level — whether the tools and curricula in use are accessible

As an example, Maya pointed out that many of the programming platforms used in CS education are not fully accessible to all learners; each platform has unique 97电影院 issues.

This is not to say that students with additional needs have no internal barriers to succeeding in CS (these may include difficulties with understanding code, debugging, planning, and dealing with frustration). Maya told us about a study in which the 日韩美女人体艺术ers used the Collaborative 日韩美女人体艺术 Observation Instrument (C-COI), which allows analysis of video footage recorded during collaborative programming exercises to identify student challenges and strategies. The study found various strategies for debugging and highlighted a particular need for supporting students in transitioning from a trial-and-error approach to more systematic testing. The C-COI has a lot of potential for understanding student-level barriers to learning, and it will also be able to give insight into the external barriers to inclusion.

Pathways to inclusion

Maya’s work has focused not only on identifying the problems with access, it also aims to develop solutions, which she terms pathways to inclusion. A standard approach to inclusion might involve designing curricula for the ‘average’ learner and then differentiating work for learners with additional needs. What is new and exciting about Maya’s approach is that it is based on the premise that there is no such person as an average learner, and rather that all learners have jagged profiles of strengths and weaknesses that contribute to their level of academic success.

In the seminar, Maya described ways in which CS curricula can be designed to be flexible and take into account the variability of all learners. To do this, she has been using the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approach, adapting it specifically for CS and testing it in the classroom.

Why is Universal Design for Learning useful?

The UDL approach helps educators anticipate barriers to learning and plan activities to overcome them by focusing on providing different means of engagement, representation, and expression for learners in each lesson. Different types of activities are suggested to address each of these three areas. Maya and her team have adapted the general principles of UDL to a CS-specific context, providing teachers with clear checkpoints to consider when designing 日韩美女人体艺术 lessons; you can read more on this in this recent Hello World article.

A practical UDL example Maya shared with us was using a series of scaffolded Scratch projects based on the ‘Use-Modify-Create’ approach. Students begin by playing and remixing code; then they try to debug the same program when it is not working; then they reconstruct code that has been deconstructed for the same program; and then finally, they try to expand the program to make the Scratch sprite do something of their choosing. All four Scratch project versions are available at the same time, so students can toggle between them as they learn. This helps them work more independently by reducing cognitive load and providing a range of scaffolded support.

This example illustrates that, by designing activities that support students with additional educational needs, we can improve the understanding and proficiency of all of our students.

Training teachers to support CS students with additional needs

Maya identified three groups of teachers who can benefit from training in either UDL or in supporting students with additional needs in CS:

1. Special Education teachers who have knowledge of instructional strategies for students with additional needs but little 边缘世界第一季/subject knowledge of 日韩美女人体艺术
2. 日韩美女人体艺术 teachers who have subject knowledge but little 边缘世界第一季 of Special Education strategies
3. Teachers who are new to 日韩美女人体艺术 and have little 边缘世界第一季 of Special Education

Maya and her team conducted 日韩美女人体艺术 with all three of these teacher groups, where they provided professional development for the teachers with the aim to understand what elements of the training were most useful and important for teachers’ confidence and practice in supporting students with additional needs in CS. In this 日韩美女人体艺术 project, they found that for the teachers, a key aspect of the training was having time to identify and discuss the barriers/challenges their students face, as well as potential strategies to overcome these. This process is a core element of the UDL approach, and may be very different to the standard method of planning lessons that teachers are used to.

Another study by Maya’s team showed that an understanding of UDL in the context of CS was a key predictor of teacher confidence in teaching CS to students with additional needs (along with the number years spent teaching CS, and general confidence in teaching CS). Maya therefore believes that focusing on teachers’ understanding of the UDL approach and how they can apply it in CS will be the most important part of their future professional development training.

Final thoughts

Maya talked to us about the importance of intersectionality in supporting students who are learning CS, which aligns with a previous seminar given by Jakita O. Thomas. Specifically, Maya identified that UDL should fit into a wider approach of Intersectional Inclusive Computer Science Education, which encompasses UDL, culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy, and translanguaging pedagogy/multilingual education. We hope to learn more about this topic area in upcoming seminars in our current series.

You can download Maya’s presentation slides now, and watch the seminar recording here:

Attend the next online 日韩美女人体艺术 seminar

The next seminar in the diversity and inclusion series will take place on Tuesday 4 May at 17:00–18:30 BST / 12:00–13:30 EDT / 9:00–10:30 PDT / 18:00–19:30 CEST. You’ll hear from Dr Cecily Morrison (Microsoft 日韩美女人体艺术) about her 日韩美女人体艺术 into 日韩美女人体艺术 for learners with visual impairments.

To join this free event, click below and sign up with your name and email address:

We’ll send you the link and instructions. See you there!

This was our 15th 日韩美女人体艺术 seminar — you can find all the related blog posts here.

The post How can we design inclusive and accessible curricula for computer science? appeared first on 漂亮女邻居.