Thank you for your presentation. I think that the premise of connecting computer science and computational thinking to storytelling is a very interesting one. I would just like to know more about how your project works practically. You said in the video that you're holding outreach events to reach students. What do these outreach events entail, and do you see these as an exploratory basis for further implementation of these types of lessons with middle schools students? I also would like to hear more about your ideas about the end products of your program, you say that you've developed lesson plans and outreach modules, but I'm curious to know about how these have been informed by the outreach events you have held thus far.

Thanks for watching and commenting, Alex. 

Our outreach events are usually 40-60 minutes and either take place on our campus or at a local school. We have worked with 3rd - 12th graders so we can get a sense of what students are capable of in different grades. For example, we have been experimenting with how much direct instruction students need prior to using the Alice platform. Most students don't mind learning through trial and error, but it takes longer for them to finish the story that they are animating, which means they run out of time. We are also testing out the different lessons that we are creating around animating American Indian stories. We have to consider what kinds of background knowledge students may/may not have and how to engage them in the content (tied to the Essential Understandings about American Indians) as well as teach them computational thinking skills. So, we are always looking to balance these along with the middle school content standards (communication arts, art, science, math, etc.) that align with the lesson. Next fall we will begin going into the rural communities to implement 2-day lessons, so the outreach events are pilots to help us anticipate issues/questions. The end products will be the lesson plans that will be shared on the Montana Office of Public Instruction Indian Education for All website. We will also have the student "worlds" that are created using Alice. Already our team has contributed to the creation of authentic American Indian objects in Alice that the students can use in their animations. 

I hope this helps give you a better idea of the process and products. 

With the outreach events, we are also working on fine-tuning our evaluation instruments.  We've learned which questions solicit better answers from students.  It's hard to get into classrooms, as classroom time is precious, so we have also adopted one of our 2-day lesson plans to fit within a one-hour outreach event in order to get feedback from students on the activities.

Thank you for viewing! I will try and respond to your questions, but also let other members of our team chime in:

1. I think we are developing those avenues to insert/align computer science concepts with storytelling. The oral tradition has historically been the means by which tribal communities teach one another about the world around them, and it continues to play a significant role today. There is considerable work with indigenous science (traditional ecological knowledge, for example) being done at tribal colleges and with indigenous scientists, but we haven't found anything specific to computer science. Animation aligns well with storytelling, so with the young learners it is easy to tell them to use the coding platform to construct a story. By aligning with Indian Education for All, we are making that connection to the oral tradition explicit and at the forefront of our curricular development. 

2. At this point we are not inviting family members into the classrooms. We have only been engaged in outreach activities to pilot our lessons. I can imagine that students will be talking about the lessons at home, and they can even download the Alice platform to continue their animations at home if they have access to a computer. 

3. On our advisory board, we have a CS professional with a Master's degree who is from a Montana tribe. He is a role model in the work that he does both in support of his tribe as well as in the industry. He and others in Montana are paving new directions for CS through the creation of nonprofits and working with their tribes and tribal colleges. In our lessons, we don't focus specifically on careers/jobs rather getting the middle school students interested in computer science in general. 

I'll chime in too!  First, thanks for watching our video and taking the time to ask such thoughtful questions.

1. Since storytelling is so central to the communities with which we are working, the understanding of science topics is also grounded in storytelling.  Here are some examples: Blackfeet Astronomy and Story of the Seasons

2. In addition to what Barbara says about students continuing animations at home, we will also have a showcase of student work at the end of our project.  This will be a way to engage the whole community!

3. Yes, our AB member is certainly a great role model!  In the future, we may also develop lesson plans specific to career opportunities.  But, we have not explicitly used that as a learning objective yet.

(Barbara responded below).  But, if you have suggestions for literature regarding any specific culture, we'd be interested in knowing what resources you think might help inform our endeavors too!

Thanks for your support! :)

Thanks, Tomas!

Thank you Jan for viewing and commenting. We would love to learn your test 's result this summer. Currently we use Alice and "community STEM jobs" refers future career orientation for our middle school students that we have various approaches to orient.

Thank you Joni for your comments.

Thanks Chris! Yes, you make a great point about how we have a platform for universal learning and engagement! We have also extended our project to reach young women, including workshops at Girls For a Change (8th-12th girls) and Expanding Your Horizons (6th-8th grade girls). We have also been adapting our lesson plans for younger kids, and recently ran a workshop for all of the 5th graders from a local elementary school (~100 students) during a "STEM Days" campus visit. Thank you for taking a look at our video and for your comments!

I'll chime in, too! First, thank you for watching our video and you bring up very relevant questions. The development of the curriculum for this project does draw on the tenets of Universal Learning, by

• engaging students in a meaning making activity,
• using stories that are relevant to them and their lived experiences,
• recommending use of a discussion based, active learning classroom, and
• encouraging usage of formative assessments that better capture student understandings. 

Broader implementation, beyond the state of Montana, does not fall within the scope of our project. However, we intend to publish results from the project so that these results are more broadly disseminated to the CS and education community. Additionally, the materials developed for the project will be available on our website, which teachers could utilize in classrooms across the country. 

Yes, there is a "code editor" panel that allows one to also drag and drop methods. Both the objects and commands for the objects are drag-and-drop. Students have access to typical commands in programming such as if-then statements, looping, or do together. It is very intuitive and simple, which makes it fun for the students! The code editor looks like this:

https://www.alice.org/resources/how-tos/code-ed...

The program we used is called Alice: http://www.alice.org/

Everything is drag-and-drop, but they can peak at the Java if they like.  However, features you'd expect in programming, such as lists, for loops, if statements, are present.

Great question, David!  I'll give  few anecdotes I have seen in response (mostly from outreach events, as we have only been in one classroom to date):

• Early on, we allowed lots of freedom ("animate your favorite story" essentially).  In one of the stories, a student wanted a wolf but couldn't find one in the library (of available models).  So, they used a dog instead.  So, we have seen that students can, with an imaginative eye, do what they want to do.
• Sometimes we give a starter world.  For a high school group, we had a skeleton in a deserted western town.  And, they had to animate the skeleton walking down the street.  While some students were on task, others decided to add some dionosaurs to the scene.  They were laughing and having fun, and they explained to us why it made sense.  So, while not meeting the objectives of the particular lesson, we at least got them excited about coding in Alice.  But, we do see their minds start wondering once they get into the list of available objects.  We're working on ways to figure out how to keep them more focused, while at the same time allowing them freedom to create something new.
• In one outreach module for 3rd graders, we read the story of the seasons then animate the seasons changing.  This is a fun one, as seasons can be represented multiple ways.  Here (in Montana), the students find snow to be extremely important in winter.  So, if you have trees that look frozen, but grass still green, they observed that.
• We don't always have a full story to go with a lesson.  One lesson we are developing is centered on the bead bags of the plateau tribes from the turn of the century.  We have a reading from Montana Historical society at the center of the lesson, and have discussions with students to interpret what they see depicted on the bags.  While there are some things we can guess based on context, the underlying story is a bit ambiguous and allows the students to interpret / use their imagination.