Programming as Process: The Potential of the Writing Workshop to Integrate Computer Science Into Middle School Classrooms

• In Event: Using Digital Media for Learning: From Dora to Facebook to Games and Beyond

Abstract

This study investigates the potential to introduce basic programming concepts to middle-school children within the context of a classroom writing-workshop. Whereas previous studies linking children’s programming with storytelling (Author 1 & Author 2, 2010; Kelleher & Pausch 2008) did so within the informal setting of afterschool clubs, this study focuses on bringing computer science into the classroom, aligning curricula to core-content language arts instruction. Students drafted, revised, and published their own unique digital stories and in the process learned fundamental concepts characteristic of object-oriented programming. Our findings point to the promise of the writing-workshop as a means to make coding a more deliberate and intuitive process, but also suggest that digital storytelling entails only a limited number of programming commands.

Authors

• William Quinn Burke, College of Charleston

• Yasmin B. Kafai, University of Pennsylvania