Computers in school

Mark Guzdial guzdial at cc.gatech.edu
Tue Aug 7 16:45:17 UTC 2001


Seymour Papert and Sherry Turkle have a terrific paper on this with a 
title that wins the award for biggest words: "Epistemlogical 
Pluralisms."  They talk issues of pedagogy and strategies for "coming 
to know," and how these differ for different genders and backgrounds.

By "boredom" I mean a bunch of things that make a class 
un-interesting.  Assignments that have no real purpose or don't lead 
to real artifacts can lead to "boredom."  Being forced to use 
strategies that don't work for you can lead to "boredom."

Mark

>I can definitely tell that it isn't boredom.  For girls, IMO it's the
>pedagogy.  In my Logo classes, I've asked each student to choose a project
>study out of Yehuda Katz's "Recursive Graphic Designs" and "Logo Art
>Gallery".  Some designs end up being  purely "for girls" and some are "for
>boys". http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Lab/2276/
>
>I've ask Yehuda who made the graphics.  Men made the ones boys chose
>exclusively and Olga Tuzova made the ones the girls preferred overall.  Both
>groups pursued the study of their individually chosen objects of study with
>equal zeal.
>
>What does this indicate?
>
>:-)  edwin
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: squeak-dev-admin at lists.squeakfoundation.org
>[mailto:squeak-dev-admin at lists.squeakfoundation.org]On Behalf Of
>Brent.Pinkney at reuters.com
>Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 1:11 AM
>To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
>Subject: Re: Computers in school
>
>
>
>On 06/08/2001 18:43:13 squeak-dev-admin wrote:
> > to learn to program. The recent American Association of University
> > Women report pointed out that women (and many others, I'll bet) are
> > drawn away from IT because we make CS classes as boring as possible.
> >
> >From inference and by observation of the demographics of every programming
>lab I have ever seen, how does this
>statement explain why causcasian, indian, oriental males do not reject CS
>majors if boredom is the only issue.
>
>Education is not supposed to be a rock concert.
>
>Sheesh....
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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--------------------------
Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
Associate Professor - Learning Sciences & Technologies.
Collaborative Software Lab - http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl/
(404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial at cc.gatech.edu
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html




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