PAA Partners with MIT Media Lab
PAA is pleased to share that we have partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab as part of their work on Coding for All: Interest-Driven Trajectories to Computational Fluency, a National Science Foundation funded initiative that is a collaboration led by the Scratch Team at the MIT Media Lab, the DML Research Hub at University of California Irvine, and Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
The Scratch Team has engaged PAA to assist as a content expert in using hip-hop in arts education experiences that also support students’ development in computational fluency. The project is exploring how students can develop computational fluency by using Scratch. Scratch is a visual programming language and online community which enables young people to create and share their own interactive media such as animations, games, and stories. PAA’s work with the Scratch Team has included developing plans on how to facilitate the design and coding of hip-hop dance animations in Scratch.
PAA Executive Director Santina Protopapa helped implement this work with the Scratch Team by co-facilitating a workshop with students at the Junipero Serra Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library in December. During President’s Day weekend last month, students from PAA’s annual RHAPSODY Hip-Hop Summer Arts Camp also participated in a weekend-long workshop that enabled them to design Scratch animations using their own dance routines. Students also worked with legendary hip-hop dancer Popmaster Fabel to learn additional dance movements and vocabulary to include in their animations. Students were excited to have Popmaster Fabel code his own dance animation during the weekend’s activities. See the animations the students created by clicking here.
In June, Protopapa will join members of the Scratch Team and others involved in the project in a presentation at the Digital Media and Learning Conference in Los Angeles, California. The presentation will share the work of this project and will engage participants in a sample dance and coding activity. The team plans to use the work of the hip-hop and Scratch design experience to generate discussion on ways to develop and support interest-based pathways into computational fluency for youth from groups under-represented in computing.
