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Learning Machines

Chapter 5: Negotiating digitally-mediated environments: Exploring how bilingual and multilingual users interact with monolingual interfaces

"languages are not static, but are instead always changing. Human beings do not have separate containers with singular languages in their brains; instead, all of a person’s linguistic knowledge and resources are always in conversation, constantly moving and mixing languages and discourses."

I resonate a lot with this point of view. Language is closely related to the society you embodied in and the culture you embraced. When I first came here, I found that it's difficult for me to find the exact English words to describe many Chinese phenomena or buzzwords(baci). I usually check the news or Wikipedia to help me find the right words to describe the corresponding phenomenon. In addition, I find that when I communicate with my family, there are also many sudden pauses in blank time, when I try to find a Chinese word to describe the English words commonly used here to represent something. My mom also mentioned this to me. But for Chinese friends who live here or are familiar with America, this is not a problem.

I was also impressed by Chapter 9: (Re-)storying ourselves: Engaging in Storywork Through Translanguaging in a STEM-Art Program.

Through stories, the program encouraged families to disrupt existing power hierarchies between families, STEM fields, and dominant appropriateness-based languaging ideologies and practices (Flores & Rosa, 2015).

I think I'll also refer to Tzou's article to think about how to design a home-centered computer project.

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Stories from the field: locating and cultivating computational thinking in spaces of learning

Using multiple examples, this article shows us many possibilities and potentials of CT in multidisciplinary learning fields. I'm impressed by the following sentences from this article:

Worse, without drawing educators’ attention to the complex interplay between computing and other disciplinary values and goals, computational ideas such as “optimization” may be noticed and valued above disciplinary and ethical goals.

Reflection: When we consider incorporating CT in the classroom, we should not put it above all else or think that all other things should give way to CT or just consider it as a tool. Instead, we need to recognize the complexity of computing and multidisciplinary integration and also attend to disciplinary values and ethnical goals. This make me reflect on my final project. I think I really need to think about "what is the essence of this final project after the CT is removed? And how it connect to CT's characteristics?" Maybe that's what really matters and needs special attention.

Also, this article gave me the answer on how to measure or evaluate students' CT abilities. Based on Breanne’s e-textiles work (e-textiles; Litts, Kafai, & Dieckmeyer, 2015), we can designed a new assessment task like codeable circuits to understand their learning process. Or we can assign students Portfolios assignment to help them document and reflect on their work, and also sustain their the computational practices and identities.

Another thing that stands out to me is "embodied debugging", which allowed students to engage with the CT concepts in an authentic way and create a more inclusive computing cultures. If we could incorporate embodiment into CT learning, I think it might be helpful to assess children's CT abilities and learning stages, especially for young children.

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Developing a Transliteracies Framework for a Connected World

Amy Stornaiuolo1, Anna Smith2, and Nathan C. Phillips3

Can we use a diagram to represent the tansliteracies framework, I still feel a bit confused after reading it.

This article also introduces us four analytical tools for inquiry: emergence, uptake, resonance, and scale, and how/ when to use them. I wonder how does Computer Science apply into these tools? What role does CS play in this?

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Electrical Evocations: Computer Science, the Teaching of Literature, and the Future of English Education

Tom Liam Lynch

The point is not for quantitative data to overshadow the deeper humanistic work of reading and writing about literature. The point is to show how computational methods can deepen and expand how meaning is made from texts in ways that honor the complex relationship between computationality and humanity.

The future of teaching English must be one that melds quantities with qualities, numbers with letters, queries with inquiries, algorithms with attitudes, the efferent with the aesthetic, and computationality with humanity.

CS can only provide an analysis tool and cannot replace human analysis. If one does not have some literary skills but is only proficient in CS techniques, it may also be difficult to apply CS techniques to literature education. Therefore to integrate CS into the education of a subject, one needs both a full understanding of the characteristics of the subject and a basic concept and understanding of what CS can do.

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Take space, make space: how students use computer science to disrupt and resist marginalization in schools

Jean J. Ryoo , Tiera Tanksley , Cynthia Estrada & Jane Margolis

This article provides us with a great potential for CS education to create democratic and free spaces at school.

confirm one's racial identity, challenge the authority, renegotiate the boundaries that already existed in school.

be a community activist who could use CS to improve the lives of people around them, embodying behaviors aligned with transformational resistance and external resistance.

engagin with personal love and challenge deficit notions of one's ability.

We can also see that the purpose of high school CS education is far more than allowing more students to choose CS as a major in the future. CS education provides them a free and inclusive community to resist marginalization and dehumanizing school contexts, while declaring their own "rightful presence" in CS classrooms.

In this article, Mr. A used hand-in-hand with an inquiry-based approach to provide the necessary context for students to be able to use computing to express their unique selves. However, we should see that the main reason why student agency is valued in this article is the teacher's initiative and inclusive attitude. If Mr. A is like the other teachers appeared in these three cases, I believe none of students may get the chance to express their real attitudes and identities. Therefore, in addition to the importance of CS education itself, the training of computer teachers is another important issue when we consider promoting CS education.

In addition, I also wonder, in a class of 40 students, how can CS teacher be hand-to-hand for everyone and give them enough support? Should we consider limiting the number of students to achieve better results in CS education?

Does CS education have assessment indicators like grades? Should there be established indicators for assessment?

#2020 #cseducation #education #identity

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Programming by Choice: Urban Youth Learning Programming with Scratch

John Maloney, Kylie Peppler*, Yasmin B. Kafai*, Mitchel Resnick and Natalie Rusk

From this article, we can see that youth do not make the connection between Scratch and programming, which may help Scratch catch on and being in line with their identities. This made me think about the purpose of designing and applying Scratch for young people. How many children will choose CS class after learning about Scratch, and will their interests persist like exploring Scratch? To what extent does learning scratch help with learning CS?

When asked whether Scratch reminded the youth of anything at school, all of the youth said Scratch was at least like one school subject, and most cited several subjects that they thought connected to their experiences in Scratch.

This finding proves that Scratch can be connected to multiple disciplines and could be a great tool for connecting disciplines or facilitate learning. Scratch allows students to create their own experiences based on subject knowledge, which can further strengthen their impressions of it and facilitate learning.

While the mentors did not have any prior programming experiences – all of them were liberal arts majors –they were willing to listen and encourage youth in pursuing their programming projects.

Teachers do not need specific knowledge or skills to become a Scratch mentor. This shows that we do not need to train teachers to be experts in Scratch when we plan to apply Scratch in the classroom. Instead, we can train teachers in listening and encouraging skills to encourage students to solve problems on their own.

While mentors are often associated with being more knowledgeable than their mentees, here we found a more equitable relationship that turned both mentees and mentors into learners.

It’s also one of the few programming initiatives that successfully engaged both boys and girls –all of them youth of color.

The huge potential of using Scratch among children is to create a place of equality, inclusion and diversity, where there is no discrimination, no prejudice, and no authority. I believe this atmosphere and creative freedom can leave a mark on a child's life， then shape their worldviews in some way.

#scratch #urbanyouth #learningprogram #programming

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Ethics, Identity, and Political Vision: Toward a Justice-Centered Approach to Equity in Computer Science Education

This article made me understand the importance of ethical education in CS education. Educating students in computer science without moral education is like giving students a knife and only teaching them how to cut things without telling them that it might hurt people. Some people use it to crack passwords and steal privacy; some people use it to spread computer viruses and breaking the law; some people even use it to perform cyber violence to achieve their own goals and harm others.

To avoid these things from happening, moral education was incorporated into CS education. But as the authors write, it only exists in the introductory courses of high school CS classes and the "Social Impact of Computing" program in ECS classes. They're just about choices and dilemmas, which are clearly not enough for students.

To make it better, the author argues that we need to position ethics as embedded within systems of power and CS conceptual frameworks. Besides that, I have two more suggestions here. First, we need to incorporate ethical education in daily practices. For example, after learning the code of delete all the things from computer, students should be told that this is not a joke and should not be used as a joke. The consequences of this code are irreversible and may also bear legal responsibility. Second, we need to combine the ethical education with the process of identity. Only when students believe they are good people who will use CS in good way, will they perform CS techniques ethically.

#ethics #vakil #2018

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Defining and Designing Computer Science Education in a K12 Public School District

I want to know your positionality when you did this research. Did you express your views during discussions or meetings? What does the teacher think of you (researcher, expert or colleague)?

This is not the first time I read this article. I feel that my understanding of this article is much better after learning more about the concept and framework of CT. I agree with the community education of computer science education. Also, we need to include more teachers from other disciplines to discuss the role that computer science education can play in k12 education. The concept of CT may not be the focus of the discussion, the relationship between CS/CT and other subjects and the application of CS in other subjects may be the focus of the discussion. Only then will other teachers recognize the importance of CT and connect it to their classrooms. Just like a math teacher can have students use code to solve math problems or check the correctness of their answers; the literature teacher can have students use scratch to write a story or visualize the plot in a textbook. I believe that this kind of interdisciplinary learning and continued connection can make it interesting to more people, especially female and minority students.

#Chris Proctor #2019 #education

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From Theory Bias to Theory Dialogue: Embracing Cognitive, Situated, and Critical Framings of Computational Thinking in K-12 CS Education

When I read this article, I had two thoughts.

First, the concepts of CT in our understanding will determine how we teach or learn them. If you think of its concept as problem-solving, you might consider teaching it cognitively. In turn, our framing of CT will shape its concept. Therefore, to adapt CS education to various situations, educators need to open their minds to other framings and do not only stick to one concept. That is to say, when teaching CT, we should pass on this idea. We should let students explore the concept of CT from multiple dimensions in practice.

Second, I wanted to connect this article to my fieldnotes taking experience. In the CS9 class, they explore the connection between CS and personal interests and friend connections at a situational level by using codes to detect their preferences in social media or music app. In CS10 class, they are learning to design webs and apps. Although they are still learning individually and cognitively now, I believe that their final project may allow them to think critically. They can design their own webs and apps and connect them with the entire community.

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“I’ve Always Been Scared That Someday I’m Going to Sell Out”: Exploring the relationship between Political Identity and Learning in Computer Science Education

Sepehr Vakil

This article offers a conceptual framework and operationalize it by conducting two case studies, which explore the interaction between students' political identities and their learning processes in CS program. The author provides us very specific examples of how to study the relationship between identity and disciplinary domain.

By reading its analytical process, I reflect on how my identity has changed in the classroom since I came here. For me, the first semester was about overcoming imposter syndrome, which is loosely defined as doubting one's abilities and feeling like a liar. I doubt whether my ability and English level will meet the requirements of the PhD program here. So I worked hard to prepare for the class and finish my assignments. At the end of last semester, I felt like I had accepted my new identity as a preschool teacher and doctoral student.

This semester, the Multicultural Education class and CT class made me think more about the impact of technology, my gender, race, and class on my identity. during this process, I found my interests in gender inequality and prejudice. I then took that interest to the assignments for each course, which in turn enhanced my identity and awareness in this area.

From my own experience, I think that when designing courses in the future, we should think about the changes of students' identities in the courses. And grasp the educational opportunity to allow students to further reflect on their own identity and the relationship between identity and disciplinary field.

#identity #disciplinary

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Special Issue: Designing Learning Environments for Equitable Disciplinary Identification

Philip Bell, Katie Van Horne & Britte Haugan Cheng

This article emphasizes how the learning environment be fundamental for the formation of students' equitable disciplinary identification. It argues that learning is always about becoming, which is not entirely present in the Chinese educational system. I found that after years of education in school, more and more Chinese youth can't find their own positions. Perhaps because social class mobility is not as fluent as it used to be and they have no power to change the situation, many young people feel trapped and hopeless. There's a popular trend of Tang ping (English: 'lying flat') culture among young people. It is a lifestyle and social protest movement in China beginning in April 2021. It is a rejection of societal pressures to overwork, such as in the 996 working hour system, which is often regarded as a rat race with ever diminishing returns. Those who participate in tang ping instead choose to "lie down flat and get over the beatings" via a low-desire, more indifferent attitude towards life.

I wonder does America has the same problem? How can you use education to fight with the cruel social reality? What education or learning brought to your identity?

From my experience, it's graduate education that really shapes who I am. And I'm still exploring my identity. Before that, family, specific teachers, and friends have a bigger impact on my identity formation. But learning and education really provided me with a platform to meet better people and realize my dreams.

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Coordinating situated identities in mathematics classrooms with sociohistorical narratives: a consideration for design

Melissa Gresalfi1 · Victoria M. Hand

When we design for identities, we are concerned with the humanity of our students, their ideas about what mathematics is and why it matters, and their visions of themselves and for their future.

REFLECTIONS:

This paper present a model of mathematical identities and articulate the elements involved in students' identities development and provided several empirical examples about that. This article helped me see the connection between identity development and math education and its hidden potential. The classroom standards of being successful in mathematics are really essential for students to position themselves in math class. Thus, educators can use group-worthy mathematical tasks to reorganize classroom norms. But I would like to know the appropriate age or grade for this strategy. Are group-worthy tasks suitable for children new to arithmetic? Sometimes math requires a certain memory base before learning something new, I think this strategy maybe more suitable for those who have a certain foundation in math class.

In addition, this article does not emphasize the application of mathematics in life, which I believe is closely related to the motivation and interests of students. I believe that if students realize how useful mathematics can be in their lives, they will take a more active attitudes to learning it. By raising awareness of this, teachers can do two things. First, they can incorporate mathematical knowledge into real-world problems. Second, they can invite students to reflect/create math problems they encounter in their lives and solve problems together with peers in the classroom.

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Identity and agency in cultural worlds.

Holland, D. C., Lachicotte Jr, W., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998)

It's interesting to see different representations of the self from Asia and Western. From my experience, when you think about "self" in China, it's not like "who you are" in everyday life but more like "what position are you in." It's always connected to the relationship between you and the family, the social and the country. Take me for example, if you ask me "what's your self?". I will not tell you directly my characteristic or daily life. Rather, I would say: well, I'm the only child of my family, first generation college student. I'm a phd student at UB. I come from China, I'm proud of my country's rapid development but I'm not a big fan of CCP.

If you ask further: "forget about that, who you really are?" Most people from China or Asia may be overwhelmed and wonder what answers you are expecting. The interesting thing here is that it's not that we don't think about what the self is, it's that we think the answer to the self should be connected to your social position first. Our representations of the self emphasize more relational notions of self rather than individualistic ones. If your answers are all about yourself without mentioning your family, society, country, people may think you are selfish. And you don't want people to have that impression, so you think and talk less about your self. Eventually, you may lose your self in this cultural atmosphere. That's also the reason why I prefer to write in English when I'm younger. I feel like it will not be considered inappropriate or selfish in the English-speaking world to express something more individualistic.

I also have a question about self-in-practice or authoring self. I don't know if I understand it right. Does this mean that when we want to measure one's authoring self, we observe the person's behaviors and analyze them? We use exposed practice as a mediation to know one's self, right? I'm also curious about what extent the self-in-practice differs from the person's perceived self.

#identity #self #agency #culture #books & libraries

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Changing Minds: Computers, Learning, and Literacy

diSessa, A. A. (2001)

Computers are incontestably transforming our civilization.

The emergence of a material intelligence as a literacy, as infrastructural, depends on complex social forces of innovation, adoption, and interdependence, even if (as I have argued is generally false) it originated with an individual or a small group. Furthermore, under some circumstances at least, small differences in learnability can make huge differences in eventual impact.

What we had is not what we have, and with-out the slightest doubt it is not what we will have.

Background & introduction:

An impassioned guide to how computers can fundamentally change how we learn and think.

Andrea diSessa's career as a scholar, technologist, and teacher has been driven by one important question: can education―in particular, science education―be transformed by the computer so that children can learn more, learn more easily at an earlier age, and learn with pleasure and commitment? This book is diSessa's informed and passionate affirmative answer to that question.

While written at a level that anyone with a good acquaintance with high school science can understand, the book reflects the depth and breadth of the issues surrounding technology in education. Rejecting the simplistic notion that the computer is merely a tool for more efficient instruction, diSessa shows how computers can be the basis for a new literacy that will change how people think and learn. He discusses the learning theory that explains why computers can be such powerful catalysts for change in education, in particular, how intuitive knowledge is the platform on which students build scientific understanding. He also discusses the material and social reasons for the computer's potential and argues for "two-way literacies," where everyone is a creator as well as consumer of dynamic and interactive expressive forms. DiSessa gives many examples from his work using the Boxer computer environment, an integrated software system designed to investigate computational literacies.

Reflections:

This chapter use lots of examples to show us how material intelligence can reshape our cognition and further transform our civilization. Most of the points in the article lead me to the theory I learned in another course: embodiment. The most basic view of embodiment is that human cognition depends to a large extent on human relationships and experiences with the environment. Thus, computer as a material intelligence that interact with people everyday may enlarge our ability and become our extended cognition. Just as the example mentioned in the article, Galileo's six theorems can be completely replaced by an equation (algebra knowledge), many things that trouble us can now be replaced by computer technology, and we no longer need to spend a lot of time and energy to explain or learn basic concepts or skills. This compactness saves our cognitive resources and allows us to focus on solving more complex problems or developing more advancing cognition.

But at the same time, it should be noted that people also need enough mental and cognitive ability to understand the material basis of literacy to present inscriptions. If we give a phone to Newtown, he can't use it to calculate or search for relevant useful information that benefits his research.

Another point in this chapter that strikes me is a social niches view of literacy. Each genre fits a different context in a different way. The implication for education is that we should be clear about which context we should create for our students, what types we will teach and how they will interact with their life and experiences.

#literacy #books & libraries #education #computer #genre

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Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing.

Margolis, J., & Fisher, A. (2003)

Women must be part of the design teams who are reshaping the world, if the reshaped world is to fit women as well as men.

Reflection: It's easy to draw this conclusion, but it's hard for women to actually design something for women. On the one hand, the design teams may offer limited chances for women to participate in. Even if women are already in design teams, their voices may be still depressed by other male members or leaders. On the other hand, even if women invent something brilliant, there's a good chance that it won't be recognized by the mainstream. There is gender bias in the world, especially for asian society. For example, as long as there is an avoidable car accident or irregular driving in China, commenters will always maliciously speculate that the car must be driven by a female driver. Although in reality male drivers have a higher accident rate than female drivers.

For this to happen, women must know more than how to use technology; they must know how to design and create it.

Reflection: Even women know all about this, the chances for them to change this male-dominated world are still low.

He continues, “Well, my father is not very patient in teaching her, but I keep trying to teach her and help her out.” The computer-impaired mother is a stock character in many students’ stories.

Childhood behaviors, however conditioned by gender socialization and genetics, tend to set computing on the male side of the gender divide.

Reflection: It's so typical that in a typical family, the father is always trying and mastering new things like computers or cell phones, while the mother is far away from or even afraid of these new technologies. Young children definitely will notice this phenomenon which may shape their expectation of their own sex. So, as we try to get more young girls involved in developing computational thinking, we should also try to get their mothers to change their cognitions and develop their own computational thinking too.

In addition, in another class (LAI 689 embodiment in education), we need to write a proposal for final project. For that project, I wanted to write something about how to apply multimodal communication and embodiment theory to develop young girls' and their mothers' interest and confidence in computational thinking. All the things that I can think about is using a tangible toy named code-a-pillar( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYEKD1Befg8). I'd like to hear your suggestions.

#Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing. #2003 #genderdivide

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The Role of Translanguaging in Computational Literacies

Vogel, S., Hoadley, C., Ascenzi-Moreno, L., & Menken, K.

His broader philosophy helps us view programming not as the mere construction of code for a computer to execute, but as texts humans will read, write, and discuss, just as people interact around other texts.

reflection: As Chris said in other class, programming is not for computer or machine, it's for people to read, understand and interact.

Conclusions: 1) that students’ translanguaging practices in CS learning contexts blur linguistic, disciplinary, and modal boundaries, 2) computational literacies are intertwined with the many other literacies students bring with them, 3) students’ language attitudes and activity contexts around them play a role in their translanguaging, and 4) students translanguage in order to engage in specific CT practices (like remixing and abstraction).

By“computational literacies” we mean ways of creating and communicating about, with, and through computational artifacts (like code, datasets, and models) for particular purposes, and in and for communities.

Reflection: Last semester, Ryan wrote an article about culturally sustaining programming.He argues that the linguistic hegemony of English as the sole source language for all popular programming languages has historically and sociolinguistically excluded those whose native languages are not English from software engineering. Thus we should use culturally sustaining programming to empower native language software engineers to derive programming languages from their own native languages.

To better understand this program, I asked a lot of computer-professional friends, do they want a Chinese programming language. They told me that the language is not most important thing to learn programing, the important thing is to learn computational thinking. Chinese programming may help you get started more easily, but it will not help you communicate with the world and develop computational thinking.

After reading this paper, I found that translanguaging in programing is a better way to allow bilingual learners to learn programming and facilitate cultural, linguistic exchanges between them. But I would also like to hear from you, do you think it is necessary or helpful to develop native language programming in addition to English programming?

#translanguaging #2019

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Language, Race, and White Public Space

Jane H. Hill

Reflections:

Even though I'm not familiar with the use of Spanish in an English-speaking context, I still resonated with this article. When I watch Hollywood movies and American dramas, I often see misuse and mock of Mandarin and traditional Chinese cultural routines. For example, some movies use Cantonese in replace of Mandarin; some Chinese elements are stylized in movies even though they are not accurate. Hollywood used “Chinese element” to explain American culture. It has nothing to do with old Chinese culture. Although, we do see some political propaganda against Chinese.

When luxury brands want to add Chinese elements, they will choose the zodiac to start with, and then create very ugly things to sell to the Chinese. White people also seem to have some misunderstandings about what Asians look like, and they are always willing to choose some models with very typical Asian faces for commercials(Square face, squinting eyes). And such looks may not be considered mainstream in Asia. These ridicule and prejudice are subtly deepening invisible racism and white supremacy. I think the solution to this problem is to be aware of the problem. White people change their arrogance, and more programs that properly promote the specific country's culture and language.