This is my last post about Barbie, I promise! I just couldn’t resist using to Feminist Hacker Barbie site to look at the bright side before this whole internet controversy dissolves away. At the end of the day, this book gave us the opportunity to start a meaningful dialogue about gender roles, so let’s keep talking about it! (This is for Alex…thanks for the idea!)
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Insipration
Inspiration: Fixed vs. Growth, The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives
Do you view yourself as bad at math? Bad with technology? Incapable of understanding computer code?
Great news! These things are only true if you continue to believe them! If you change your messages to yourself, you will be more than capable of being good at math, good with technology, and capable of understanding computer code (among any number of other possible things you could choose to learn).
Excerpt from article by Maria Popova: Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets that Shape Our Lives: Continue reading
Thanks Barbie, for another reason NOT to want to be you!
This is the fatal page from the 2010 Barbie book I Can Be a Computer Engineer. Barbie goes on to give her sister Skipper’s computer a virus, get some boys to help her fix it, and finally take individual credit for the whole shebang (including the robot puppy game that the boys programmed). At no point does Barbie do any coding at all. You can read the original blog post that brought this controversy to light here.
I never really identified with Barbie. Sure I played with her, but what little girl in the 80’s didn’t? However, I wasn’t blonde or skinny. I didn’t care to drive a pink corvette, wish to own a “dream house”, or marry my very own Ken doll. I didn’t want to be Barbie, and didn’t care what kinds of new careers she was trying out. I mostly liked to dress her up, which might have had a slight impact on my love of costuming and fanciness, but that is the extent of her influence.
She was fun, but never any real impact on my life (or so I like to think…) Continue reading
Universal Children’s Day: Do Children Have the Right to Learn How to Code?
Tomorrow is Universal Children’s Day, a celebration of the day 25 years ago when the United Nations adopted the “Convention on the Rights of the Child”.
Did you know that the United States is one of only 3 UN countries that has not ratified this?
In celebration of the 25th anniversary of Universal Children’s Day, my school created this video. Please feel free to share it with your communities:
https://www.facebook.com/BoulderJourneySchool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOxodRT3Uf0
I’ve argued on this blog that children can all benefit from learning to code, but I wonder at what point this will be considered a right. Should it be?
“How can we educate children for a future we cannot yet imagine?”
These words were offered last night by Carlina Rinaldi and Ellen Hall. I have been thinking about this question since then and will continue to consider…
What do you think?
Inspiration: Learning By Doing
The article, American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn’t Exist, by David Edwards, provides some incredibly important perspectives for educators to consider: http://www.wired.com/2014/10/on-learning-by-doing/
Describing current educational trends, the article states: “We ‘learn,’ and after this we ‘do.’ We go to school and then we go to work. This approach does not map very well to personal and professional success in America today. Learning and doing have become inseparable in the face of conditions that invite us to discover.”
The authors go on to describe some important movements bubbling up through the cracks of our institutions: “Discovery has always provoked interest, but how one discovers may today interest us even more. Educators, artists, designers, museum curators, scientists, engineers, entertainment designers and others are creatively responding to this new reality, and, together, they are redefining what it means to learn in America.”
Part of the reason I’m learning to code and writing this blog is because I believe that In order for students to adopt and maintain attitudes of discovery, teachers need to be discoverers too. We must play, design, experiment, and find joy in the process in order to be effective in our jobs and nurture the natural creative genius in our students. I’m not yet sure if I believe that every teacher will need to learn to code, but I do believe that every teacher needs to find and nurture their own creative passions and seek new creative challenges to tackle.
What will it take for our schools to provide professional development that fosters teacher discovery?
What will it take for teacher education programs to nurture discovery mindsets in new generations of teachers?
Inspiration: Dispositional Thinking
Check out “Dispositional Thinking, Changing the Game”: http://teachingonthewind.wordpress.com/
“Dispositional thinking is about changing the focus from learning being something you are good or bad at, to something that is learnable and changeable, something that you can practice and improve; moving from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. It’s about developing the skills that support learning and are, at the same time, invaluable in 21st century workplaces.”
This empowers me as I bumble through my personal journey to learn to code, and is something I’d like to think more about. However, I think the ideas presented here are relevant in a much broader sense for all teachers, teacher educators, and beyond!
If you have comments, please post them on the original page.
Teacher Learns to Code 