One aspect that the article brought up was finding metrics to measure success. It made me realize that when it comes to equity you have to not only find create a program that works but also find out to how to measure the effectiveness.

A question I had while reading, though, was if there were programs simlar to this but focused on different subjects such as history or psychology. Would a program such as ECS pigeon hold disadvantaged students into CS since no such programs exist for other subjects?

The first is if this same analysis can be done for fan-fiction website where super heroes/villains are pitted against each other in battles. In these battles two characters from different comic series (think Spiderman vs Superman) are placed in a situation where they are to fight. A lot of the discussion I’ve seen regarding these fights include aspects that the study highlighted such as “argument, counterargument, and the use of evidence to warrant one’s claims.”

The second question is if games can be made to improve science literacy. The reason why I ask this question is because the players are passionate about the world and systems that they discuss in World of Warcraft, whereas a game meant to purely encourage science literacy might not illicit the same passion and thus provoke the same discussion.

Devlin proposes that we utilize video games to do so, which I believe is a great step. However, I wonder…in what way can we utilize technology (in the broader sense) to create a new way of representing math? Symbols seem to be a way that we’ve optimized the representation of math for paper. What new medium in the future will be utilized?

Either way, I wonder what would be an effective way of leveraging technology to encourage children to write/ tell stories?

Interest: A way for parents to find/know the most up to date educational apps and a way for them to monitor their children’s app usage

Response:

The Williams et. al. reading really got me thinking about the video games I played when I was little. It notes how characters in video games are predominantly male and white. I personally never saw representation as a problem until I got to Stanford. A lot of the problems, I’ve learned, affect children. The reading specifically discusses how underrepresented children can be disenchanted and “may have less interest in technology and its opportunities for class advancement.” This caused me to explore why I, although being a minority, was not affected by this since I am still exploring a career in technology. One of my theories was that I played a lot of video games where the main characters were aliens and creatures that weren’t real. Another theory was that my family had a large influence in my affinity for technology. Overall, this reading made me appreciate the potential of video games more. They’re a fun activity, that if utilized correctly, can be really beneficial for underrepresented children.

The website’s focus is to teach the fundamentals of programming and computer science to students aged 4 – 18 (I focused on the 4-6 year old activities).

Review

Aside from teaching younger students the fundamentals of coding and computer science, studio.code.org also exposes them to the idea that coders can be of any background whether it be female, black, hispanic, or athletic. The front page of the website is covered with a myriad of coding activities that a student can click on, ranging from coding fundamentals to coding games with characters from Frozen/Star Wars. This gives users a lot to choose from, but at the same time, the choices are all appealing. I played a Star Wars coding game and did a few coding fundamentals.

For the coding fundamentals, the course started with a video that introduced pair programming – the idea of coding with a partner. This video was interesting as it did two things. One it was presented by two little girls, with one being caucasian and one being black. Two it also talked about how to treat your partner with respect and not fight over the mouse. It also encouraged the pair to communicate and talk with each other. I thought this was really nice because it exposed users – especially young ones – to the idea that demographics that are usually underrepresented in tech can code. After the video it had me go through a few mouse clicking and drag and drop exercises. I think this is useful because it not only gets young users familiar with how the mechanics of course’s lessons but also dragging and dropping objects on the computer in general. Once these drag and drop exercises were completed the next thing the course had me do were basic block code problems involving Angry Birds characters. It had me drag and drop blocks that directed the bird to go in certain directions. My job was to guide the bird to the pigs. Presenting code in the form of simple blocks is a method used at UC Berkeley and Harvard and is a very common way for teaching coding. Doing it this way helps users develop the intuition behind functions or methods, which are essentially blocks of code meant to perform a certain purpose. After a lesson on blocks, the course moves onto a basic look over algorithms. Before starting to code, a fun video about making chocolate is shown and algorithms are presented as instructions on how to do something, which is a basic but great way of doing so. The algorithm activities were filling in steps and directions. From the fundamentals I decided to play the Star Wars coding game, which involved similar mechanics as the lessons, but were less directed. I was left to solve the problems on my own. It was fun to see how they utilized the droids from Star Wars as characters.

Overall, it was a really great way of presenting and teaching 4-6 year olds how to code. The games and lessons were fun and interactive. The inclusion of characters from popular culture was really nice as well. In addition, the videos that were shown added a great dimension to the whole experience. They touched on subjects such as perseverance, respect, and communication. The videos also does a great job at focusing on people who are underrepresented in tech. Throughout the video I saw girls and boys who were black and hispanic. I think this is valuable for development because this would essentially be telling young users that anyone can code.

Redesign

The biggest thing that I would redesign about the site is who it focuses on. As of now a lot of the games show “All Ages” or even “4 – 18.” While the games and lessons can be play by people in middle school or high school, they wouldn’t be very fun or too educational. On top of that, almost all the videos had children who were introducing the topics. Overall, I it felt like it was trying to appeal to too many ages. This can be summed up by a look of the front page:

To me the front page can be redesigned to represent what age group the lessons are focusing on. For example it can look like this:

To me the front page can be redesigned to represent what age group the lessons are focusing on. For example it can look like this:

Here there are dedicated tabs at the top for each age group. By selecting an age group at the top users would be brought to a different web page that is dedicated for just users of those ages. That way, each age group web page could be decorated differently to reflect users. Ages 4 – 6, for example, could have the background filled with Star Wars or Frozen characters. Similarly, ages 14 – 18 can have a more sleek and modern design that is more mature.