Posts published in January, 2016

Week 4 Response—Shelley

I was drawn to the article by Kafai et al. because I remember, quite clearly, my love of Barbie Fashion Designer when it came out in 1996. I was struck by the line, “Seemingly against conventional wisdom, it demonstrated that girls could be interested in using computers.” (2) This observation speaks to the depth to the stereotype… Read more Week 4 Response—Shelley

Critical Media Literacy

The Black et al reading is the second reading in this class (after Alper, week 2) to emphasize the need for children to develop “critical media literacy.” Both papers recommend that children gain some critical faculties for analyzing the cultural messages and assumptions that they receive from media. I think this is desirable, but I… Read more Critical Media Literacy

Assignment 1 Review and Redesign - Mingming Jiang

  Description: URL: http://www.vidcode.io/ Objective: get teen girls excited about coding by creating fun video and graphic effects Target age: teens   I chose to study Vidcode, an online platform that empowers teen girls to learn to code and unleash their creativity by creating music videos, motion graphics, and fun video effects. Vidcode attracted me… Read more Assignment 1 Review and Redesign - Mingming Jiang

Goochee Week 4 Discussion Post

Wowzers, week four’s readings have been the creepiest so far, by far. I am responding to the child near-future-robot scenario article. I found the postulation that children will form moral and social relationships with their toys to be completely ridiculous, until they invoked the first example of the Tamagotchi, which I did love and interact with in… Read more Goochee Week 4 Discussion Post

Assignment 1

Game: Lady Popular Website: ladypopular.com Focus: Virtual world Age: Teens Description: Browser-based fashion game set in a virtual fashion world. As a user, you set up a personalized avatar and explore the fashion career path through various quests. Megan Faulk – Assignment 1

Week 4 Discussion

The discussion of morality regarding robots was fascinating and raises a lot of questions regarding other forms of moral literacy and how children develop this moral capacity. Kahn et al mentioned “most children believed that Robovie deserved fair treatment and should not be harmed psychologically” and additionally that “participants attributed some level of moral accountability to… Read more Week 4 Discussion

DQC Week 4 - Robots in our future?

Kahn et al.’s argument that robots will be the future of our society and be detrimental to childhood development was not very compelling to me. Though I agree that technological advancement has accelerated in recent years and we have become increasingly urban towards a “technological nature”, I do not agree that robots will have the… Read more DQC Week 4 - Robots in our future?

DQC - Week 4 - Betsy Anderson

While reading Fröbel’s Forgotten Gift I did not get the impression that any of the 20 toys and activities he created had distinctively male or female  features. All of the toys and activities seemed to be fairly gender-neutral and over time have inspired very gender specific toys like Legos and sewing activities. In Barbie Girls and… Read more DQC - Week 4 - Betsy Anderson

Week 4 Reading － Phoebe Shang: the missing piece in this human-robot interaction

At the end of the article about human-robot interaction, the authors utter a warning that as the rate of technological change has been increasing exponentially for centuries, developmental psychologists need to be agile and future oriented in their investigations if they are to remain relevant. Speaking of relevance, however, I find a constantly missing piece… Read more Week 4 Reading － Phoebe Shang: the missing piece in this human-robot interaction

Technology Review & Redesign - Phoebe Shang; WeVideo (www.wevideo.com), an online video creation tool, is accessible to children at various grades and levels.

WeVideo (www.wevideo.com) is a collaborative online video creation tool that allows users to upload their own media clips or use stock media clips to produce their own video. It has a video editor that provides tools for editing the video easily. WeVideo offers its users several options to share their work with others like through… Read more Technology Review & Redesign - Phoebe Shang; WeVideo (www.wevideo.com), an online video creation tool, is accessible to children at various grades and levels.