How can they know, 
how hard the burden?
How can they know, 
how heavy the load?
Struggle finds a strong heart 
and tears, rivers of love
and silence binds us all.”
~ Susan Herrick

How can they know? That question has been an ongoing refrain in my head for some time now. Who are they? Students, all ages. What should they know? That is the question of our age, isn’t it?

How can they know? At the Making Connections conference earlier this month, Zoe Weil said the teaching profession has the most influence on our future, yet our current educational goals are not worthy of our students hearts and minds. Students aren’t learning about how our every day choices affect the world. We are not empowering them to investigate the impact of their own choices. 

How can they know? At the Global Education Conference this past week, I had the privilege of moderating three youth-led sessions. Ms. Devlin’s 4th grade class shared their passion for service-based learning. Amanda, a high school student, shared her interest in building a global collaborative project with other students to bring global awareness into the classroom. Jordan, a college student, wants to expand upon his student-led World School Initiative. One constant that came shining through in all these sessions is that youth are passionate about and energized for making a difference in the world. 

How can they know? My own experience with Project Justice has convinced me that student voices are powerful. As stereotypes were broken down and comprehension began to dawn, I saw first-hand the energy and passion of youth that was inspiring and frankly a little overwhelming. Is that why we have such a difficult time appreciating the input, perspectives and contributions of our youth?

How can they know? Amanda is frustrated that lessons are stuck in the classroom, knowledge isn’t applied and students are unaware. Jordan kindly observed that even though “youth are uniquely equipped to think creatively and think outside the box… our voices have been a little muffled.”

How can they know? What role do we educators play in the acquisition of this knowledge? Jordan shared a great analogy for the role of adults. The student is the driver and the adults involved throughout their life act as guardrails. As educators, we can instruct on how to drive, point out landmarks/directions and stand as guardrails, but students need to be firmly in the driver’s seat.

They can know because we trust them enough to give them the opportunity. We can seek out the Jordan’s, Amanda’s and Ms. Devlin’s in the world and start sharing with and encouraging each other. I hope you will check out the wealth of resources as you prepare to stand guard: protecting and empowering a student’s voice.

Day of the “Tech” Girl

October 11, 2012 is the first ever International Day of the Girl Child.  The United Nations set this date aside to recognize that empowerment of and investment in girls is critical for:

  • economic growth;
  • the eradication of poverty;
  • meaningful participation of girls in decisions that affect them;
  • breaking the cycle of discrimination and violence

This day provides focus to efforts that are helping girls gain “the active support and engagement of their parents, legal guardians, families and care providers, as well as boys and men and the wider community.”

“Tech” Girls
We know that one very important way to empower girls to imagine and achieve new futures for themselves is by providing them with solid foundational knowledge of computer science concepts and inspiring them to share their vision with the globally connected community.

What’s the problem?

  • The ratio of women studying computer science in college is less than 20% (US stat).
  • Stereotypical images about computer science, like it’s boring, hard, anti-social and irrelevant, persist.
  • By age 13 girls determine a positive or negative attitude towards subjects like computer science.

Alternate realities

  • Through hands-on experience, girls recognize that computing is about creativity, connecting people and changing the world.
  • Mentors help break down the stereotypes behind computer science.
  • Parents and schools understand the importance of computer science education.

Change the world!
The under-representation of women in computing and its affect on society are complex issues, but we cannot let the scope of these issues stop us from attempting to make a difference in the lives of girls right now.  The International Day of the Girl on October 11 provides us with an opportunity to engage girls, their families, their schools and the wider community about the power of computing.

Changing the world requires passion, commitment, resources and collaboration. If you have read this far, you’ve got the passion and commitment to empower girls. Please share your ideas for Day of the “Tech” Girl activities and events. I’ll start by suggesting we use #dayofthetechgirl as the hashtag.

International Day of the Girl resources

Tech Girl resources

Scratch “Create Your World” Conference Reflections

After attending a conference, I like to summarize my thoughts and document the resources I’ve gathered.  It takes some time, but I take pretty good notes and the thoughts usually flow.  As I try and wrap-up my time from Scratch@MIT 2012, I am struggling with the words.  It’s certainly not that I didn’t get a lot out of the experience, because I did.  I gathered all the usual suspects from this conference - new ideas, connections, inspiration and some cool tricks to try at home.  But this conference was different and there is something else that’s come home with me.

One difference is that I attended with my 14-year-old son.  I could not have asked for a better experience for him - subway navigation, MIT campus exploration and interactions at the conference that have sparked his creative juices.  During the keynote session with Connie Yowell & Jan Cuny, I was reminded that many students don’t get the opportunities my son has because the adults surrounding them don’t know how to make the connections from their interests to career pathways.  Too many students don’t get to even realize that computing is an interest because CS is simply not taught in their school and, of course, these students are disproportionately minorities from low income families. This really shed light for me on the whole “badges” initiative as a way to help make the pathways & connections transparent and equitable.

What really hit home for me, is that there are amazing tools like Scratch to help bridge this gap, but that the pathways to get this tool into the hands of students often isn’t schools.  For instance, Connie Yowell said that the MacArthur Foundation doesn’t want to try out innovative programs in schools because of the high-stakes testing environment and Jan Cuny said that high schools won’t even consider adding a new subject unless it’s AP CollegeBoard approved, so that’s why they are targeting their limited funds to the CS 10K Initiative.

The format of their keynote was very different. Each spoke for a few minutes about their perspective projects and ideas about computation, culture, creativity, engagement, stereotypes, etc. then Mitch Resnick asked them to respond to some pretty open-ended questions.  This is where things got interesting because while they are both extremely passionate about seeing changes in the computational culture space, they also have different approaches and because this space is so obviously neglected and misunderstood by the powers that be, there is clearly some tension between the two approaches.  It’s frustrating.  They are frustrated and I’m frustrated for them and for myself.  I think that’s what I brought home from this conference that is hard to deal with. 

On the other hand, they were also passionate and hopeful.  It’s hard not to be passionate and hopeful in the MIT Media Lab space, surrounded by so many inspiring educators.  The manager in me whispers, all these frustrations are really just opportunities and there were plenty of ideas and work shared that could fill those opportunities:

I really enjoyed the Ignite presentations, but they did flash by very quickly.  I wasn’t able to get notes on all of them, but here is what I did note:

  • Joanne Barrett shared that requiring CS in 7th grade helped change gender perceptions about it. Before starting, all of the boys thought it sounded fun, most of the girls thought it would be boring, but 90% enjoyed and that surprised them.
  • @JanetLDee shared about picking one place to start introducing Scratch into an existing practice, instead of making an all or nothing decision.
  • @MsVeraDLeon shared about after school programs in Mexico where she introduced kindergardeners to Scratch, just to mess around with, but the children began learning programming on their own.
  • @pks shared the 10 things he learned from creating an after-school Scratch club including facing gender bias from parents & that computer skills vary, but not by age. 
  • Vicki Gold shared about her experiences of using Scratch with students with Aspergers.
  • Joseph Jones shared about his experience of leaving his middle school students with a Scratch project while he had to be away for a few weeks and being shocked when he returned to see what they produced without his help (and while the substitute slept).

Other highlights:

  • @reesegans and I got to strategize about #CSK8 and some things we’d like to recommend to CSTA to help open up this pathway.
  • @saorog shared Kinect2Scratch along with educators from Japan who used it as a platform to reach out to MS & HS girls.  The nature of programming with Kinect2Scratch means that working in pairs is best.
  • I finally caught up with @hoosjon and @epaynemls, local Charlottesville educators eager to give Scratch a try in their learning environments.
  • I attended SNAP! A Grownup Programming Language Based on Scratch with Brian Harvey because I wanted my son to see how Scratch does relate to next steps in college. I had heard Dan Garcia at #CSIT2012 talk about the Beauty and Joy of Computing, which I think is such a great idea. I was very happy to find SNAP! worked on my iPad (I think this is actually a pretty big hole for Scratch 2.0, especially considering all the 1-1 iPad programs). I found a little tension in this room too as some people wanted to really nail down what the “right” programming language was for “serious” computer science classes.  I feel like that distinction is not really important for these courses and these tools that are really just trying to introduce computer science to a majority of students who have never even encountered it before.
  • The session where I learned the most cool tricks was Getting into the Digital Music Game with Scratch with Jesse Heines.  I had no idea Scratch could deliver the kind of sounds I was hearing in that workshop.  Turns out setting turbo speed is the key. Also, the connection between music and computational thinking is made very concrete with Scratch. Can’t wait to try out my own compositions.
  • Xander & I attended the Getting to Know Scratch 2.0 and I loved seeing Mitch Resnick present the new features with kid-like enthusiasm. We are both looking forward to procedures, cloning, cloud data & video sensing. Xander already has his first game planned out!
  • Many more ideas were shared with the twitter hashtag #ScratchMIT2012

I hope to take my own frustrations and turn them into action.  One area that I think we all need to help act on is finding the pathways that allow students to experience the power of computing and empowers them to make connections from their passions and interests to their next steps. We need to document the pathways we’ve forged, so others can share them, doing our part to help grow the influence of the computational culture from the ground up. 

why I teach

I teach because a friend encouraged me, a principal took a chance on me and the kids challenged me.  I teach because I get to meet these amazing human beings in progress.  They give me hope for the future, especially when I’m frustrated with the present.  I teach technology because I learn something new every day.  I can’t imagine keeping up with the pace of technological advancement if I didn’t have this focus and I learn so much from the kids, who are using technology in ways we never imagined.  I teach because I want to help kids find and share their voices. I believe technology and social justice are intertwined.  Technology is a means to empower voices, bridge divides and level the playing field.  I want to convert technology users into technology creators, collaborators and activists.  I teach because I had a successful career in technology.  I thought I was helping to pave the way for the women after me to be treated as equals, but instead I finally realized I was just playing by the rules of corporate America.  I teach because I want to change the world.

Do you teach?  Why?

Race, Inequality and Student Activism with Carl Dix & Cornel West

This is a “must see” presentation and well worth the time - especially if you are passionate about social justice.


quotes from Carl Dix
“Our youth are responding to situations that they had no control over and that they had no complicity in putting into place … (to the youth) You didn’t create this situation, but you have a responsibility to be part of the solution to the situation.”

“Education should be about teaching people how to think critically, giving them the ability to understand reality and to act to change it.  It should be about instilling in the youth values and an orientation that will inspire them to want to devote their lives to understanding reality and trying to change it.”

“When you come to education for those on the bottom of society, it’s a cruel insult to those youth. You have millions of people in the inner cities of this country who go to schools that are more like prisons.  Every morning when they go to school, they’ve got to go through a metal detector.  And then once they go through that metal detector, they see the halls of their school patrolled by actual police… Despite the good intentions of many teachers, these schools are setup to fail our youth, to push them out the door onto the streets and to send them out with a message that it’s their own damn fault that they are in those situations.”

quotes from Cornel West
“I come from a tradition that says lift every voice and if you have the courage to accept to truth, you are going to have to listen to every voice because no individual, no group has a monopoly on truth. We need to listen to one another and learn from one another, if we’re going to organize and mobilize together.”

“If you are committed to truth and the condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak and if you are concerned about justice, then justice is what love looks like in public. … If you love folk, you can’t stand that they are being treated unjustly.”

“We disagree with most of our professors, we disagree with most of our politicians - can you keep track of the element of truth that’s at work in their language and in their witness? can you keep track of the element of justice that’s in their work and in their witness?  that’s the challenge.”

“42% of our precious children of all colors live in or near poverty in the richest nation in the history of the world. That’s moral obscenity. Every American ought to be ashamed to live a nation where the precious youth of whatever color has to deal with that level of social neglect and economic abandonment and it’s tied to greed, greed at the top.”

“I’m a jazz man, I don’t want everybody to imitate me, I want them to find their own voices. Imitation is suicide. Have the courage to be yourself.”

“Young people are hungry and thirsty for truth. They are tired of the lies they have been bombarded with.”

“For the last 35 years, we’ve told young people in every corner of this nation to be successful, be successful, be successful. What does success mean? Material toys, title, wealth, power and being well-adjusted to injustice, well-adapted to indifference.  Is that success? I’m old school - my tradition told me to be great. And he or she is greatest among you is to do with the quality of service to others and the depth of love for others.”

“Are you concerned about the poor children whose voices rarely get a chance to surface?”

“The Occupy movement is a love movement, it’s not about hating anybody. We are not demonizing anybody, we are demonizing systems. That’s why none of us are purely part of the solution, we are all shot through with contradictions.”