Eid Carol- Computational Thinking as a Social Practice

Positing that computational thinking is a social practice and calling for reframing the concept to “computational participation” lead me to further consider the parameters of the learning environment that we are trying to foster at University School of Nashville.

As a matter of fact, we are currently considering developing a toolkit to scaffold the process of “debugging” to our students as it seems that they might not intuitively recognize its value in developing a working code or be able to approach this skill successfully.  Nevertheless, this week’s articles lead me to think of additional ways in which we could scaffold the learning environment. For instance, how could we design for “peer pedagogy and apprenticeship” in our activities to support students in developing their computational skills and prevent them from giving up when they hit walls in coding and design? As a matter of fact, ill-conceived learning environments could promote the development of student identities that constrain the learning that could happen.

“[S]tudents’ sense of confidence with digital technology is inextricably tied to their own personal identities. Whether an activity taps into these identities and allows for personal expression plays no small role in whether a child will be attracted and persist with any such activity” (Kafai & Burke, 2015, p. 325).

This paragraph greatly resonated with me since one of the participants in our devised activity told me something along the following lines: “I am just bad at developing video games. I tried it before and it just didn’t work.” His words made me think of how early coding experiences can actually shape one’s perception of his/her potential in this domain. Consequently, making sure that the environments we design are rich enough with scaffolds that promote success in achieving the task is not a trivial issue.

               Since all of the participants last week were males, I wonder how we will be further challenged in our tasks when female participants (hopefully) join the class this week. Paying attention to how participants of different genders and ethnicities are positioned in the interactions that occur as well as to the repertoire of identities that our activities afford would be critical to the students' ability in developing computational skills. Looking forward to the next phases and let me know if you have any thoughts on this!