Thanks, Brian.  In the initial stages we're seeing students are making things that are meaningful to them and may be whatever other youth are engaged in thinking about *e.g. Hello Kitty). As they become more comfortable with the process, we find students may make something that appears to be "More Native."  They are certainly engaging the process in interesting ways, They  observe others before jumping in, even as we encourage them to "jump in."  The PI (that's me) and our RA are both Native peoples, so we find this to be consistent with how many Native peoples engage the process.

Hi Bryan and Brian,  The librarian's comment about the children helping each other sounds a lot like the research we present in our NSF video, "Learning by Helping," by Angélica López Fraire and Lucía Alcalá and myself.  The video shows the helpfulness of Mexican heritage California children whose families likely have Indigenous background.  They were more helpful to an instructor in a science activity than European American middle-class children.  Hope you have a chance to have a look at our video and tell us what you think...

Yes, Barbara!  There are some interesting overlaps.  I also mentioned below in my comment to Debby Fields that our participants are also engaging in periods of observation (as opposed to "jumping in") which reminds me of your work with youth in Guatemala.  Importantly, the comment for the librarian in your video and ours begins to push us along in recognizing the larger spheres of influence around indigeneity.

Love your work!

Thanks Bryan!  Such an important topic for deepening our understanding of how people learn!

Thanks Kelsey.  We hope to be able to continue these intergenerational collaborations this summer. We have a number of activities planned that will have students teaching their parents and grandparents, as well as their teachers.

Thanks, Andee.  This program has been fun and educative for us.  This is a lunchtime and after school and weekend program, with a summer component. The Principal at the school is very engaged and enthusiastic.  He is committed to the work; he is also under pretty direct orders to focus on getting students' scores up.   This isn't an intended critique; it's a reality of the times and the school.

We've been able to work with students through a summer program and recruit here, and through community members. 

Thanks, Angela.  The notion of cooperation is very, very important to us and to the Community.

The principles have largely been driven by relationships between people, ideas, and place.   Our work has a heavy emphasis on asking student to be fully aware of where they are, how they are related to that place, how schooling relates to them, and how they think about education (broadly defined). So, the design principles focus on place, on community, on relationships, and responsibilities.

Thanks, Erica, This has been a fun project for us. 1. We have some sense of how students were engaging to school and  other activities, because we have been in the community for over six years.  Students are generally engaged int he schooling process, but spend their lunchtime socializing with others or sitting outside.  On days when we have the maker space in the library, the students walk by during the period before lunch, peek in, smile, and walk away.  These students show up to work with our fabulous research assistant who is there several times a week.  So, we have some sense that their engagement is high.  They've also noted that the like having Sequoia, the graduate student, come in.

2. In terms of pop culture, students will make anything from Hello Kitty to the names of musical bands/groups they like, or other characters (the Hulk, Wonder Woman, etc).  Much of where we're starting to land is that culturally responsive practices is about the processes they use (and that they make at all), rather than the products, although sometimes the products are "Native." Sometimes they're not.  Both can be culturally responsive.  

Thanks, Deborah.  I love your work, and appreciate all you're doing.

In terms of processes, we're finding that students are varying how they engage the topic.  Many of our groups and students spend a lot of time watching others do before jumping in.  We're struck that there is often a sense that if you simply expose students or makers to the technologies, they'll pick them up, use them, explore, and make.  Our participants will often sit back and watch others for some time; this is pretty consistent with the ways that some of us have written about and considered/taken up Indigenous Knowledge Systems wherein observation--over long periods of time--occurs before people actually "do."  Barbara Rogoff's (see her post above) work in Guatemala is another example of this process at play.

So, the students may make engage or make things with a Hello Kitty theme.  Another group focused on interactions between Donald Trump and Kim Jung Un as part of their making process.  Some might say to us, "But that's not Native!"  We think that the culturally responsive piece of this isn't the end product.  Instead, it is the fact that students are engaging place/space in particular ways, in a particular moment, with a focus relationships between people, ideas, and place with a specific focus on place.  That, along with the role of observation, are a few ways that processes lead our thinking.  

Thanks Bryan. That is very interesting and makes a lot of sense. I'm doing a different study on constructionism in Thailand - largely being developed on their own terms there - and it's leading to many insights about making, constructing, etc,. in ways that speak back to our more Western/dominant? discourse about making, doing, individualistic tendencies, and so on.