Category Archives: MODULE 3

Mod 3 P.2

Ontario College of Teachers video – Voices of Wisdom: Learning from Elders

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbxCtmteQ-U

Even though this video was posted in 2010, it is so profound to listen first hand to the experiences and wisdom from the First Nations elders, an Inuit elder and a Métis senator. They share their experiences and the importance of understanding Indigenous students and their history. 

One speaker spoke of connections to the content at school and how Old MacDonald’s farm discusses sheep and pigs. Animals that some students wouldn’t know about, whereas if it has been moose and beavers, the students would have connected and engaged with the content. This video really allowed to reflect on the curriculum in the classroom and how something as simple as discussing different animals can make the classroom more inclusive. 

Mod 3 P. 1

Integrating Provincial Standards and Indigenous Ways of Knowing

Learning Bird is an organization that offers so much for educators. They work with “Indigenous schools and communities across Canada to create culturally-relevant educational content that benefits all students.” Educators can contact the team for support, or sign up to be a pilot school. 

The article I linked above was one I came across in researching Indigenous ways of knowing. I found it helpful that the article talked about why schools are including Indigenous ways of knowing, as well as how teachers from non-Indigenous backgrounds can integrate Indigenous knowledge respectfully. Integrating Indigenous knowledge and perspectives can be challenging when you don’t know where to start. Learning Bird explains the why and how, as well as provides some examples in language arts and math.

 

Mod#3-Post#5: Culturally Responsive Computing

Article link: Broadening Participation Toward Culturally Responsive Computing Education

“Improving academic success and social development by merging computational thinking with cultural practices.” (Eglash et al., 2013, p.33)

Culturally Responsive Computing (CRC) is a prominent framework in technology education that is based on the Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT ) body of work and its three main pillars  : Asset building, reflection, and connectedness. Unlike Ethnocomputing, which I discussed in previous posts, CRC encourages participants to engage, reflect, and build together while challenging the status quo in computing..

In the given article, Eglash et al. (2013) claim that CRC can raise the interest of underrepresented groups in the technology field. They argue that cultural factors have a significant role in the underrepresentation problem of STEM and computing education and reject the cultural and genetic determinism myths. They stated, if children or teachers believe in these stereotypes, they can have real [negative] impact. Following this, they provided few approaches that are using the CRC framework and addressing the non-economic barriers to computing:

  1. The heritage culture of Indigenous knowledge: such as using patterns of the native American beam-loom tool.
  2. Vernacular culture: such as using music in the teaching of Python.
  3. Civic Culture in Computing education: such as using the cartesian structure of Navajo rugs to learn about coordinates in GIS.
  4. Hacking culture in computing education: such as designing new things with existing hardware, recycling motors from discarded printers, which in turn, raises the students’ awareness of the problem of “e-waste” (Eglash et al., 2013).

In their conclusion, Eglash et al. (2013) state that CRC is not only meant to enhance students’ achievements in tests but what is more vital is that it may help to develop a healthy self-identity in children “from devalued or disempowered ethnic groups” (p.36). Overall, the article complements several of Eglash and his associates’ work in ethnocomputing publications. However, with a new perspective (i.e., CRC) that encourages framing computing education into a social justice lens.

References:

  • Eglash, R., Gilbert, J. E., & Foster, E. (2013). Broadening participation toward culturally responsive computing education. Communications of the ACM, 56(7), 33-36.

Mod#3-Post #4: Culturally Situated Design Tools: Ethnocomputing from Field Site to Classroom

Link to the Article: Culturally Situated Design Tools: Ethnocomputing from Field Site to Classroom

The article is one of the few empirical examples available in literature focusing on the design of culturally responsive computational tools and their impact on broadening the youth’s interest in computing. Eglash et al. (2006) commence their paper by challenging the myth that “we each have a specific culture, and that it is a given, static entity to which our personal identity is fused in a kind of mimetic relationship” (p. 348). They explain that the development of Culturally Situated Design Tools (CSDTs), their culturally responsive ethnocomputing software, is guided by four principles: “deep design themes,” “anti-primitivist representations,” “translation, not just modeling,” and “dynamic rather than static views of culture” (p.348-349). Their Native American design tools include “SimShoBan,” Yupik Navigation, Yupik Parka Patterns, Alaskan Basket Weaver, Navajo Rug Sim, and the Virtual Bead Loom (VBL). The authors describe the latter as a tool that connects contemporary vernacular culture and traditional heritage culture and at the same time it fulfills the curriculum requirements. They described several conflicts in the development process and the application of VBL in the classroom: Firstly, they reported a problem in the original program which was based on a standard “scanning algorithm,” as a result, they developed a second tool based on “Shoshone beadworkers” methods (see figure 1); they kept both designs for the sake of comparison between the approaches. Secondly, when VBL was introduced in Uintah-Ouray Reservation, the Ute group have recommended eliminating the black beads (i.e., regarded as bad luck in the community) from the VBL. As a result, they came up with a color mixer as a solution, which allowed users to create their bead colors. The authors regarded the tensions as “a two-way street, creating new hybrids in both machines and people” (p.356).

|Figure 1: “A comparison of uneven steps in a Virtual Bead Loom triangle (left) and even steps in Shoshone-Bannock beadwork (right).” (p.353)|

Following that, Eglash et al. (2006) reported statistically significant increases in students’ performance on math evaluations and their interests in IT careers. However, the most important outcome of their work was “the trialectic of computer media, math pedagogy, and culture [that] provides a meeting place in which the praxis of social change and the theory of cultural critique can generate new forms of hybridity and synthesis” (p.360).

Reference:

  • Eglash, R., Bennett, A., O’donnell, C., Jennings, S., & Cintorino, M. (2006). Culturally situated design tools: Ethnocomputing from field site to classroom. American Anthropologist, 108(2), 347-362. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2006.108.2.347

Mod#3-Post#3: Postcolonial Computing

Link to the article: Postcolonial Computing: A Lens on Design and Development

Research on broadening the participation in computing focuses mainly on culturally relevant teaching but rarely addresses the design and development of our tools. Postcolonial computing is a critical perspective asking questions about how technologies mirror the biases of humans that make or interact with them (Irani, Vertesi, Dourish, Philip, & Grinter, 2010). The authors consider it a mode of investigation in the process of design and analysis to expand the conversation around cross-cultural technology (Irani et al., 2010). The authors suggest four critical shifts in their HCI4D (Human-Computer Interaction for Development) approach that broaden the understandings of power, history, identity, and epistemologies. They present these fundamental shifts via cases of biases in technological design and development. Then, they suggest alternate formulations of design work, namely, engagement, articulation, and translation (Irani et al., 2010).

Some key points in the article that resonates well with my inquiry: 1- “Understanding the diverse forms design practice and contextual reasons for that diversity” (p.1319); 2- “embracing heterogeneity in design, rather than attempting to control or eliminate it” (p. 1319); 3- “staging of encounters amongst various stakeholders” (p.1319 ) rather than formulating the design as needs and outcomes.; 4- and recognizing that we aren’t designing “for static, nationally-bound cultures, but instead as interventions both in conversation with and transformative of existing cultural practices” (p. 1314). The key message I am taking from this article to my discussion of tools is that we need to dismantle the binary between technology and culture in the design and development process and investigate the intersections between them. Also, contexts and cultures need to be the starting point in design and development, rather than supplements to the initial model.

Few acronyms used in the article that haven’t been explained to the audience:- UCD (User-centered design), OLPC (One Laptop per Child), and ICT4D (Information and Communication Technology for Development).

Reference:

  • Irani, L., Vertesi, J., Dourish, P., Philip, K., & Grinter, R. (2010). Postcolonial computing: A lens on design and development. Paper presented at the 1311-1320. https://doi.org/10.1145/1753326.1753522

Module 3 Post #1 How Teachers can help kids find their Political Voices

Sydney Chaffee – TedxBeaconStreet – November 2017

“Never forget that justice is what LOVE looks like in public” – Dr. Cornel West.

Sydney talks about how education can be a tool for social justice.  How education and teachers should aim to empower students to articulate their OWN opinions and no coerce students into agreeing with us.  That we become thought partners with students and help them to have tricky conversations about social justice and activism with each other and with adults in their lives.

Sydney talks about schools teaching problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration, perseverance and the most important historical context.  That by intertwining these events we explore history with our students and that we can show them that history is ongoing and we are potential players in living history.

To do this, we need to change the way we think about rebellion in our students and instead think of them thoughtfully pushing back as a sign we are doing something right.  That sometimes teachers will be the ones that teachers will push against, our systems, our assumptions and our complacency.  To do that we need to stop thinking of Education as a set of nouns and instead think of education as a series of verbs that serve as an engine to “drive” our path forward in justice.

The biggest part of Sydney’s talk is that students deserve just as much respect and trust as we would give adults.  We need to give them the tools to express themselves and be prepared for that expression and that learning can be messy.

Mod #3-Post 2: Storywork, Making, Materiality and Robotics

Article Link: Storywork in STEM-Art: Making, Materiality and Robotics within Everyday Acts of Indigenous Presence and Resurgence

The family-based robotics workshop presented in the article is another recent example of integrating Indigenous approaches grounded in storytelling to enhance youth’s interest in the computing field. Also, after reading Kawagley and Barnhardt (1998) this week, I consider this article as exemplary of the merge between the Western and Indigenous system as the authors present Western technology and traditional knowledge as equal and complementary epistemologies. The figure below is the theoretical framework of their work; they conceptualized strand1 as the Indigenous knowledge systems and incorporated storytelling, teachings about identity, intergenerational place-based knowledge, and communal responsibilities. In the second strand (strand 2), they enacted making, materiality, robotics, and scratch founded by the constructionist view. They explain that as the strands twist and intertwine the cordage (used in the article to bring together these domains), each strand strengthens, and together, they enhance Indigenous resurgence, and the family and community end. The researchers reported that their approach allowed students to see computer programming and robotics as tools for creating, collaborating, and engaging in cultural practices (Tzou et al., 2019).

Theoretical Framework – The intertwining of Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Materiality and Engagement towards Indigenous resurgence (Tzou et ai., 2014, p.311).

Reference

Mod#3 -Post#1: Teaching Computer Science through storytelling

Manuscript: The Pathway to Achieving Classroom Equity: Computational and Critical Thinking through Storytelling and 3D Models

An example of a culturally relevant teaching (CRT) approach to introducing Indigenous youth to computer science education is the “Storytelling project” that is currently a work in progress by researchers at Montana University. The project aims to support equity in the classroom via a teaching approach that combines Indigenous narrative “Storytelling” with computer science (CS) components and the goal is to help increase the American Indian’s participation in CS majors (do Amaral & Windchief, 2019). The target audience is middle school students in Montana tribes. The tool is Alice, an object-oriented drag-and-drop programming environment that has already proven to be successful in engaging and retaining diverse and under-served groups in computer science (do Amaral & Windchief, 2019).

The authors state that the oral tradition has historically been the means by which tribal communities teach one another about the world around them, and it continues to play a significant role today (do Amaral & Windchief, 2019). There is considerable work with indigenous science (traditional ecological knowledge, for example) being done at tribal colleges and with indigenous scientists, but they haven’t found anything specific to computer science. Animation aligns well with storytelling, so with the young learners. Thus, it may promote the youth’s interest in CS while using the coding platform to construct their stories (do Amaral & Windchief, 2019). The researchers reported that they consider the messages and symbols of the American Indian stories and enact the seven essential requirements of the Indian Education for All Act (IEFA) in their analysis of the culturally charged material to avoid any unintentional bias in their lessons and activities (do Amaral & Windchief, 2019). Currently, they are developing several lesson plans and online modules to share with educators. Once they are finalized, the materials will be available on the website: http://www.montana.edu/storytelling/. Below is the project presentation:

Teaching Computer Science through Storytelling (Videohall.com, 2018, April 24)

References:

  • do Amaral, B., & Windchief, S. (2019). The pathway to achieving classroom equity: Computational and critical thinking through storytelling and 3D models. Educational Research: Theory and Practice, 30(1), 62.
  • VideoHall.com (2018, April 24). Teaching Computer Science through Storytelling

    . retrieved from https://vimeo.com/266368518

M3P1: Indigenous Math Games

I came across this resource, and I plan on taking at least one of each type of game and incorporating it into the Alberta Program of Studies.

The game “Hubbub” caught my attention. Players take turns tossing the dice and collecting point values, represented by the sticks. The game ends when all of the counters are gone, and whoever has the most sticks at the end wins.

This is a very simple game that opens up lots of discussion about probability, at many different grade levels. I can see it being used in elementary for patterns and collecting data; in the middle school level for simple probability; and at the high school level for statistics and probability.

http://mathcentral.uregina.ca/RR/database/RR.09.00/treptau1/mathcontent.html