Interview with Audrey & Ron! How did you get started / what inspired you to create CSDTs and lesson plans? I wrote the book “African Fractals” (watch the TED talk for more about that) thinking that it could introduce African math and computing concepts in the classroom. But teachers did not seem to see any way to include that material in their lessons. So the CSDTs were created as a way to bridge the gap between the indigenous ways of representing those concepts, and the classroom way of representing those concepts. How do you decide on what cultural designs you would like to turn into CSDTs?
"The process of creating CSDTs begins with interviews with artisans, videos of their practice and “reverse engineering” of their designs; these are used to create a quantitative model that attempts, as closely as possible, to reflect the creative and technical processes of the artisans as well as the indigenous knowledge of their social context. This is important because simply imposing computational thinking externally would not have any impact on the myths of genetic determinism and might also detract from its effects on myths of cultural determinism. In the case of Native American beadwork, for example, we found that the concept of two orthogonal axes embedded in the rows and columns of the bead loom resonated with deeper cultural themes that were also organized by four-fold symmetry: native languages using base four counting; teepees made with four base poles; prayers offered to “the four winds;” etc. Interviews with artisans also revealed the use of iterative patterns; “up one over one” to create a 45 degree angle for example. The resulting model – iterative patterns on a Cartesian grid – is not necessarily something a traditional beadwork artisan would immediately tell you (in fact most artisans begin these discussions with something similar to “it can’t be explained, you just have to learn it with your hands”). But neither is it merely imposing alien What inspired you to make a quilting CSDT?
I love the folk art of quilting and knew that there was a strong quilting tradition in African-American culture. We conducted research and discovered the rich algorithmic content in African-American quilting tradition called Gees Bend. We also discovered similar computational thinking in Native American and Appalachian quilting. As we explored the computational side, that encouraged us to learn more about its social justice dimensions as well. How do you see these projects & your work developing in the future? In addition to expanding the free software, we are working towards disseminating the material forms of our CSDT curriculum by creating toolkits that can be purchased online by schools, school districts, teachers, and families.
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Select a page from the header above to learn more about my blog!Kimi. EWS. “The foundation of data gathering is built on asking questions. Never limit the number of hows, whats, wheres, whens, whys and whos, as you are conducting an investigation. A good researcher knows that there will always be more questions than answers.” Categories |