nhardson – EDUC 342: Child Development & New Technologies

I didn’t know what engineering was…

nhardson — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 05:46:10 +0000

When I was in high school I had a vague idea of what an engineer did. They built things. Usually with their hands I thought. Bridges and buildings and stuff. I didn’t think I wanted to be an engineer. I wanted to be a math major. My best friend wanted to be a chemistry major. Looking back now I wonder how two people with a passion for Math and Science did not explore the possibility of pursuing the E or T in STEM. Now at a place like Stanford I can’t imagine not understanding how much the world requires engineers and computer scientists. And yet, I didn’t think that way not too long ago. It is amazing to me the lack of exposure I had to engineering and that it took me an entire year to enroll in a Computer Science class at Stanford (only to realize how much I loved it). I think that my Stanford experience would have been very different if I had exposure to computer science and engineering in high school. I think the state of our world requires early access to computer science. I think students, regardless of socio-economic background, should walk into college with at least a minor understanding of what programming is. I know I wish I did.

Crowley- Girls and Science

nhardson — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 08:54:47 +0000

I found this article to be incredibly interesting. Particularly because it brought me back to a video I viewed a couple of years ago: https://youtu.be/XP3cyRRAfX0.

The lack of encouragement and development girls receive around STEM at a young age is incredibly disheartening. I think we are moving towards attempting to create tools to give girls access to STEM. Tools like GoldieBlox are incredibly exciting. However, I believe the true problem is cultural and subconscious. How do we change the ways parents approach girls and science? I think everyone wants their children to succeed but I do think that there are perceptions around how to raise girls that need to change. I wonder how we can make that change possible. I wonder if it must be through awareness and assuring that parents take a very active approach in assuring that they are motivating a girl to pursue STEM as much as they would a boy.

Week 7

nhardson — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 07:32:10 +0000

I would first like to note that I found the Berkowitz reading to be fascinating. Particularly due to the success of this app and the clear demonstration that interaction with parents around math leads to math achievement. I suppose this is interesting to me because I am the daughter of a math teacher. Thus, my childhood was full of math games. I still remember looking at the Pythagorean Triangle drawn on my garage wall as a child wondering what it meant. My sister was a math major and I highly considered being one before settling on Symbolic Systems. It is clear to me that the engagement I had with my mom around math at home was a very significant component in my math achievement. I suppose I wonder how can we expand apps like this so that young children who do not have parents who are comfortable with math can gain the necessary engagement to improve their math skills. Particularly I wonder how do we change the mindset around math in the home to be more like that of stories in the home- a necessary part of a child’s home experience. And how can we support parents so that they may better engage with their children in the home? Is their a way to provide a math app that has a component solely for parents to become more comfortable with the math, in addition to a component that allows them to engage in the material with their children?

Week 6 – Writing Socially

nhardson — Thu, 11 Feb 2016 04:33:51 +0000

I found the Curwood-Magnifico-Lammer’s article to be incredibly interesting. Particularly because my middle school years were full of online writing. I utilized a cite called “Worthy of Publishing” that provided a platform for aspiring writers to post their chapters and have others comment on them. It truly demonstrated to me the power of having an audience. I wrote because people wanted to know about my story. I got feedback and was able to read imperfect writing in order to understand what good writing looks like. It was an incredibly formative time for me as a writer.

Additionally, I found it interesting the idea of implementing this type of format in a classroom. When I was in middle school two other girls and me were all working on our own “novels.” We formed a mini community by emailing each other our work and giving feedback. We motivated each other and created our own small social network to motivate our writing. I can’t help but think utilizing peers in motivating young writers is critical and I honestly believe using a social network in order to do that is brilliant. I think that affinity groups form that type of platform naturally but I wonder if there is a way to create a platform, like “Worthy of Publishing,” targeted at youth, where completely original work could be created.

Week 5 Discussion-Gaming and Mental Health

nhardson — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 07:47:36 +0000

I found the Granic reading to be incredibly interesting. Primarily the idea that video games could be used as a platform to treat mental health problems in youth. This seems like an excellent opportunity area to utilize video games as a platform for social good. Additionally, I believe it would be incredibly interesting to utilize the social nature of video gaming, as noted in the reading, for potentially creating communities around mental health and video gaming.

Furthermore, this made me think about how video games could be used in other ways to promote social good. I am particularly interested in brainstorming ways that video games could be used to instill positive values in youth. I think we often associate video games with violence but I wonder if there are ways to use video games in order to promote positive values instead.

Assignment 1: Curiosity Machine

nhardson — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 10:54:49 +0000

Curiosity Machine

A site that exposes students to the design process and design challenges, while providing access to advice from real engineers.

URL: https://www.curiositymachine.org/

Focus: “We support parents, STEM mentors and educators to inspire children to build their curiosity, creativity and persistence, one design challenge at a time.”

Target Age: K-12 (Seems to be a primary focus on K-8)

PDF : Assignment1_Hardson-Hurley

“Her,” Robots, and Child Development

nhardson — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 07:15:04 +0000

What I found particularly interesting and terrifying about the piece on Robots and Child Development is how often we are blind to the potential detrimental effects of technology and how easily we write them off. When I first was reading the article I wasn’t convinced. I think from a technological point of view the possibility of developing social robots is so fascinating and exciting that it is so easy to focus on the good and believe that critics are overanalyzing the effects of a piece of technology. However, once I came across this paragraph:

“What will happen if children grow up interacting with robots as peers and even friends because of the robots’ sociality, but also objectifying if not dominating the robots because the children understand that the robots are a human technological creation? Imagine, for example, if an 8-year-old’sbest friend is a social robot. The child plays with the robot everyday and goes to it for comfort and companionship. The robot always does what the child wants and the child never needs to accommodate to the social interests and needs of the robot. Does that situation put into motion a master–servant relationshipthat we would not want to reify”

I was taken back to the film “Her” and the reality that it is very possible that we will get to a point where the line between robot and human is so blurred that the effects of a child treating a robot as less than human could effect the way said child interacts with humans. A truly fascinating idea and a terrifying one because it is very likely that such a possibility will not stop technological developers from developing the technology that could lead to such a phenomenon. So I guess I am pointing out a question that we keep confronting- technology is changing and sometimes not for the better, how do we keep up and prevent the detrimental effects from harming children in the process?

Week 3

nhardson — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 07:41:10 +0000

I found the Hirsh-Pasek article incredibly compelling due to its potential real world applications. Particularly, I came away wondering how we could assure that parents and app developers had access to/considered this information when making choices about apps for children. As the article mentioned, the potential effects on the achievement gap that could be achieved by increasing awareness and access to well-formed learning apps could be profound. Therefore, I wonder how to convince app developers, in particular, to consider this framework during the development stages. Could a seal of approval be used in the app store for approved educational apps? This way both parents are notified and developers are incentivized?

Parasocial Relationship-Kim Possible

nhardson — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 20:26:36 +0000

I loved Kim Possible when I was younger. She was an inspiring and empowering female character. SHE WAS AWESOME

Week 1 Discussion-Nicole

nhardson — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 04:41:22 +0000

“When a character more closely resembles a viewer, emotional investment with a program increases, and the likelihood that viewers will learn educational content also increases” -Media as Social Partners: The Social Nature of Young Children’s Learning From Screen Media

I found this to be incredibly interesting, particularly regarding children of color and the limited amount of content that features characters that look like them. I have seen the emotional connection this causes. Doc McStuffins from the Disney Channel series, for example, is a character that my 3 year old cousin holds very dear, likely because of the fact that Doc McStuffins looks like her. The potential educational benefit that could arise from a diverse media necessitates action in the space of creating children’s shows and learning tools.