Ant and Bear Dance for Dokweebah: Using a Skokomish Story to Engage Middle School Students in Event-Driven Programming
Pages 43 - 49
Abstract
Learning computer science (CS) is important for careers of tomorrow. Informal CS opportunities, however, are often limited by a student's socioeconomic disposition, location, ethnicity, gender, and ability. In Montana, these limitations are exemplified in rural communities where a dedicated CS teacher is not available. In order to make informal CS opportunities more equitable, we developed culturally responsive outreach modules for students across Montana by using storytelling as a basis of inquiry.
In this paper, we present an outreach module based on the Skokomish story of How Daylight Came to Be. In this story, the two main characters–Ant and Bear–each dance for Dokweebah (the Changer). Students animate these dances using event-driven programming in the drag-and-drop programming environment Alice. While creating their dances, students construct knowledge of targeted CS concepts and make design decisions based on the context of the story. This outreach module reframes the context and activity of computing in an effort to transform the way in which students see themselves as potential future computer scientists, and democratize computing as a means of telling stories.
By using Brayboy's Tribal Critical Race Theory as a theoretical framework for the development of the outreach program, we introduce computing from a lens of American Indian ways of knowing, culture, and power. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this unit in this exploratory study, we describe students' responses to the outreach programs in terms of perceptions of CS and perceptions of Alice as a culturally relevant programming tool.
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Index Terms
- Ant and Bear Dance for Dokweebah: Using a Skokomish Story to Engage Middle School Students in Event-Driven Programming
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180 pages
ISBN:9798400700484
DOI:10.1145/3576882
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