Community mural projects provide youth with the opportunity to learn new skills, have a voice, and deepen their connection to their communities. This pictorial reflects on a participatory community-based STEAM project in which a group of teenagers collaborated with a muralist (Author 2) and two interaction design researchers (Authors 1 and 5) to create an Interactive Mural—a traditional mural with embedded electronics. We analyzed students’ experience of agency, expression, and connection to community throughout the project. We discuss how large-scale community-centered projects that provide opportunities for student agency and expression are rich learning environments that can promote technological fluency.

This paper introduces interactive murals—artworks that combine longstanding traditions in community mural painting with ubiquitous computing—as new sites for collaborative STEAM learning. Using research-through-design and participatory design methods, we conducted an intensive spring and summer workshop in which high school students were introduced to electronics and programming through the process of creating an interactive mural. We describe the workshop activities, the mural design process, and the data collection and analysis methods. Through documenting student learning in programming and electronics and the collaboration that occurred, we build an argument for the novel learning affordances of interactive murals, emphasizing the unique opportunities that they provide for collaborative STEAM learning.

Enhanced participation of Black women in CS education research is of ethical imperative, and empowering individuals who would otherwise not be able to fully engage in this community improves the quality of research and increases our national potential to solve real-world problems. We posit that the lack of participation of Black women in CS education research is not due to a lack of interest or expertise, but instead is another example of the continued marginalization of Black women that exists throughout our society. This panel of Black women scholars will share (1) their unique experiences and perspectives as Black women in the field of CS education, (2) the barriers Black women encounter in CS education research, and (3) existing and potential support mechanisms that enable Black women to more fully engage in the CS education research community.

In this paper, we examine a co-design workshop in which youth redesigned a learning activity for critical engagement with computing for the Hour of Code, an annual event that offers hour-long introductory computing activities to youth. We conducted co-design workshops during summer 2021 in two cities with 12 youth of Color (ages 11-15 years), in which we employed different reflective, collaborative and making activities to investigate youths’ critical perceptions of computing and address the following research questions: (1) What are the perspectives of youth from groups historically marginalized in computing on critical issues in computing? (2) What kinds of projects do youth create in Scratch to address critical issues in computing? and (3) How do youth reflect on the learning activity and make changes to implement it with their peers? In the discussion, we address what we learned about co-designing a critical computing learning activity with youth.

As one of the largest initiatives to introduce K-12 youth to computing, the Hour of Code has reached hundreds of millions of students around the globe. While Hour of Code activities have been immensely successful, they have also been criticized for their focus on puzzle-like close-ended guided activities leaving out more creative and critical engagement with computing. In this paper, we report on efforts to design CodeQuilt, an Hour-of-Code-style activity in which middle and high school youth were asked to design Scratch projects that engage with issues on who and what is computing. We analyzed over 100 Scratch projects posted on the public CodeQuilt site in addition to reflective responses provided by participating youth. We found that a wide array of Scratch projects engaged creatively by integrating popular media but only a small number of projects focused on critical issues. In the discussion, we outline next steps for better supporting more critical and creative engagement with computing in Hour of Code activities.

While much attention has focused on promoting computational thinking in K-12 CS education, much less attention has been paid to the equally significant dimension of what it means to identify with the discipline. Previous approaches to CS identity have mostly focused on getting students to reveal their identifications in the form of drawings or survey responses, while more recent approaches have started to examine narratives in a field that historically has marginalized women and students of color. My dissertation seeks to broaden participation in computing by creating access for groups who have historically and structurally been excluded from CS. While learning computational skills and designing interactive paper quilts, high school students of color will draw upon their lived experiences to reimagine new connections and stories about CS. Using video observations and field notes, students' reflective worksheets and artifacts, and student interviews, I will explore what happens when youth of color use CS skills and digital technologies to "restory" their CS identities, the kinds of metanarratives about CS and computer scientists youth identify, and what the process of restorying looks like in practice.

The links between music and computation date back at least three decades. This trend has led to the development of learning environments for novices to make music and learn computational concepts. However, research connecting music and computation is mostly situated within the context of on-screen programming, with little research involving hybrid, tangible environments. Electronic textiles (e-textiles) is one such hybrid context where learners craft interactive physical artifacts by sewing microcontrollers, sensors, and actuators onto toys, clothes, or other fabric accessories. Prior studies show that Arduino-based e-textiles afford opportunities for students to learn basic concepts such as variables and control flow but not more advanced concepts such as arrays and for loops. In our study, we expand learning with e-textiles as learners compose and code music to address the following research question: What are the affordances of designing musical wearables to deepen computational conceptual learning? We present a case study of a group of four 15-17-year-old youth and an adult co-making a musical wearable-JazzHands-a glove augmented with actuators such as LEDs and speaker, and motion, touch, and light sensors. We analyzed videos of the group's collaborative design sessions, student daily journals, multiple versions of the code, and post-workshop, artifact-based interviews with the youth. Our analysis revealed that making musical wearables not only allowed the youth to express themselves and relate to computing as a creative endeavor but also afforded unique opportunities to work with constructs such as arrays indices, sensor data integration, and logical expressions to control for loops.

Many efforts of curricula design have concentrated on expanding participation in K-12 CS education by introducing innovative approaches but few have focused on addressing longstanding equity issues through their choices of culturally relevant materials and activities. In this paper, we describe our efforts in using electronic textiles which include Arduino-based microcontrollers that are sewn with conductive thread on fabrics to connect actuators and sensors and create interactive wearables. We report on the implementation of an electronic textiles curricular unit in the Exploring Computer Science introductory computing course in 13 high schools involving 272 high school students largely from underrepresented groups in a major metropolitan school district. We examined two issues relevant to broadening equitable participation in CS: (1) students' changed perceptions of computing, and (2) students' depth of learning of computing, circuitry and crafting in the final project. Pre/post surveys on students' perceptions of computing showed positive, significant gains in students' self-confidence in solving CS problems, fascination with computing and ability to be creative with computing. Teacher evaluations of students' final projects revealed robust learning in the areas of basic programming and computational circuitry as well as strong learning across more challenging computational concepts, with room for growth. We discuss factors that impacted student outcomes and outline steps for further analysis.