Social discussion of CS in K-12

[Martin Wolske <mwolske AT illinois.edu>]

Hi all,

As we prepare for the public engagement symposium, and as we work on 
various writing projects, but also to further help us in our own 
reflections on our wonderful work together, I'd like to propose a 
possible group exercise. This was something suggested last fall at a 
session of the Engagement Scholarship Consortium in relation to doing 
evaluation that works to move beyond privileging the contributions and 
perspective of just one entity. For this university group, in talking 
with funders, directors, the university more broadly, they first 
highlighted the great successes of the project overall. Then they 
described their contributions and concluded by saying "But for our 
contribution, this project would not have been able to..." while also 
highlighting in reports and presentations the other contributors and 
stating "But for the contribution of this partner and that partner, this 
project would not have been able to..." We already are expected to do 
this by highlighting the academic literature that informed our work. 
This group is working to extend that to equally privilege community and 
university partners contributions.

I would be extremely curious to hear from each person on this list 
reflections, sent as a series of emails or as one attached reflection 
document, on the questions:
"But for your own contribution, our collaborative projects would have 
struggled to..."
"But for the ________ contributions of ________, our collaborative 
projects would have struggled to..." (where the first blank is the ways 
in which contributions were made and the second blank is who 
specifically made those contributions)

For the second, this might include past teachers or mentors, books and 
articles you've read, etc. as well as a person or organization active in 
our work today. Who do you see stepping up to the plate to make a 
contribution, and how? Who contributed in important ways in the past to 
influence your ideas, attitudes, behavior, etc. that are now having an 
influence on our work today?

I suspect the story isn't just or perhaps even primarily the digital 
technologies and coding that's happening, but the organic community, 
both adult and child/teen peer, that has been developing, and it would 
be fascinating to get a better sense of the layers of connections that 
comprise the community. Perhaps this exercise would help begin bringing 
that to light???

-- Martin

--
Martin Wolske, Senior Research Scientist and Adjunct Faculty
Graduate School of Library & Information Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
337 LIS Building, 501 East Daniel Street
Champaign, IL  61820

217-244-8094 (office) 217-244-3302 (fax) 217-840-7434 (cell)
Google Hangout: martin.wolske; Twitter: @MartinBWolske; Blog: 
http://mwolske.wordpress.com