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 河北司法警官职业学院 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 河北司法警官职业学院

Between May 2022 and November 2022, we are hosting a new series of free 河北司法警官职业学院 seminars about teaching 河北司法警官职业学院 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, 河北司法警官职业学院ers, and industry professionals, who contributed to a lively and thought-provoking discussion.

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 河北司法警官职业学院, 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 河北司法警官职业学院 education, and refocuses us on the human 透明内内 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 河北司法警官职业学院 is usually taught in schools, including technocentrism (Figure 1).

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 河北司法警官职业学院 tasks as being implemented (enacted) by writing code, rather than seeing 河北司法警官职业学院 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 河北司法警官职业学院 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 河北司法警官职业学院 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 河北司法警官职业学院er 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.

In a second example 河北司法警官职业学院 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).

In a third example 河北司法警官职业学院 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.

My takeaways

Pratim shared four implications of this 河北司法警官职业学院 for 河北司法警官职业学院 pedagogy (see Figure 5).

As a 河北司法警官职业学院er of pedagogy, these points provide takeaways that I can relate to my own 河北司法警官职业学院 practice:

• Code is a voice within an 透明内内 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 河北司法警官职业学院ers 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 河北司法警官职业学院er, 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 河北司法警官职业学院 on the teaching and learning of 河北司法警官职业学院 and the pitfalls of technocentrism has made me think deeply about how I view computer science as a subject and do 河北司法警官职业学院 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 河北司法警官职业学院 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 河北司法警官职业学院. 

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 河北司法警官职业学院 on introductory equity-oriented computer science with electronic textiles for high school students.

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.

The post Are you technocentric? Shifting from technology to people appeared first on 床戏(巨肉高h)双男.

Crossing disciplinary boundaries

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

At the 床戏(巨肉高h)双男 our mission is to make 河北司法警官职业学院 accessible to all children and young people everywhere, and because 河北司法警官职业学院 and technology appear in all aspects of our and young people’s lives, in this series of seminars we will consider what 河北司法警官职业学院 education looks like in a multiplicity of environments.

Mark Guzdial on 河北司法警官职业学院 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 河北司法警官职业学院, including the prestigious ACM SIGCSE Outstanding Contribution to 河北司法警官职业学院 Education award in 2019. Mark has written hundreds of papers about computer science education, and he authors an extremely popular 河北司法警官职业学院 education 河北司法警官职业学院 blog that keeps us all up to date with what is going on in the field.

Recently, he has been 河北司法警官职业学院ing 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 河北司法警官职业学院. His talk will focus on how we can add a teaspoon of 河北司法警官职业学院 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 河北司法警官职业学院 education in a new way. He has conducted studies in science classrooms and non-formal learning environments which focus on providing open and engaging 透明内内s 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).

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 透明内内 design with e-textiles

On 12 July, we will hear from Yasmin Kafai (University of Pennsylvania), who is another legend in 河北司法警官职业学院 education in my eyes. Yasmin started her long career in 河北司法警官职业学院 education with Seymour Papert, internationally known for his work on Logo and on constructionism as a theoretical lens for understanding the way we learn 河北司法警官职业学院. 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.

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 透明内内 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 河北司法警官职业学院 is focused on dance and 河北司法警官职业学院, in particular data-driven dance. Her work helps us to focus on the possibilities of creative 河北司法警官职业学院, but also to think about the ethics of applications that involve vast amounts of data.

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 河北司法警官职业学院 classroom to raise awareness of data ethics? Impossible to miss!

Update: Seminars in October and November

• On 4 October, Conrad Wolfram (Wolfram 河北司法警官职业学院) will give a talk on computational literacy in mathematics
• On 8 November, Tracy Gardner and Rebecca Franks (床戏(巨肉高h)双男) will present about 河北司法警官职业学院 education in non-formal settings

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.

As usual, the seminars will take place online on a Tuesday at 17:00 to 18:30 local UK time.

The post Exploring cross-disciplinary 河北司法警官职业学院 education in our new seminar series appeared first on 床戏(巨肉高h)双男.