Excellent program! This is about situating the knowledge in the comfort zone of the learners. I voted!

Welcome to the Remezcla project video page! 

Our grant "Collaborative Research Broadening Participation of LatinX Students in Computer Science by Integrating Culturally Relevant Computational Music Practices" aims to expand middle and high school students' STEM engagement and opportunities within both the continental United States and Puerto Rico. Through our creative approach we teach code and music composition by designing, implementing, and assessing a new informal learning curriculum. 

We are looking forward to your questions and our discussion!!!

Hi everyone!

My name is Isaris Quiñones, the program coordinator of Remezcla in Puerto Rico. I hope you see in Remezcla a way to bring students from the challenges of programming to a comfort zone (as says Ekundayo Shittu) through music, as they learn to program, creating their own musical composition.

I had the opportunity to experience the motivation of some middle schoolers who want to continue studying computer science related courses. I have also seen high schoolers integrate their culture using latin music. It has been a pleasure to work in Remezcla!!!

Thank you, Diley, for sharing this exciting project! I love the ways that the project infuses computational thinking and coding into approaches that are relevant and responsive to the Latinx students you are working with. I was wondering how students become participants in the program—do they opt-in? Is this a new program or part of an existing structure?

You mentioned that you are conducting research on outcomes for students – do you have any preliminary observation, anecdotal evidence, or feedback from students on their experiences so far? Look forward to learning more about the work!

Diley and Team, that is great! Are you planning to use and test different musical genres to validate the approach and see whether the musical genre affects the results? If so, what kind of measures will you use?

Oh my goodness, this is such a fun and innovative project! Can you please clarify if the students in Puerto Rico collaborate on music with the students in Atlanta? If so, what does a collaboration look like?

Was an incredible experience! My 12 years son loved it and thanks to this his looking for universities or options to continue related computing studies.

Una verdadera Remezcla de lenguaje computacional, lenguaje musical y cultura. 

Excelente iniciativa en la que tuve la oportunidad de participar este año junto a mis estudiantes de escuela superior. Una magnífica Remezcla de programación musical. Jóvenes sin conocimiento previo, aprenden de una manera divertida tanto de lenguaje computacional como de música.

This is fantastic! Thank you for sharing this work with us!

I love to see earsketch going to new places.

Do you see that this culturally adapted version engages children more than the previous version?

Thanks!

Sumamente honrada  al ser invitada por una maestra excepcional, la Profa . BrendaLee Estevez para  ver la presentación de Remezcla de sus alumnos. Cuanta emoción ( hasta las lágrimas) presenciar ( y bailar ) con las demostraciones de unos estudiantes que se empoderaron , disfrutando al máximo  su proceso de aprendizaje.  Proceso el cual pudieron realizar una genuina Remezcla de su esencia músico cultural (así como  fortalecer las inteligencias múltiples, en especial la musical ) . Observamos cómo el  descubrir , aceptar y dominar los retos de la ciencia computacional les condujo a maximizar procesos ( ej . trabajo colaborativo) y  y canalizar emociones en estos tiempos difíciles. Nuestro respeto y admiración a un gran equipo que no dudó (puso su entusiasmo y ganas ) y creyeron en el grandioso potencial de los educadores como Mrs Estevez,  y los estudiantes de Puerto Rico. Entendemos que es altamente necesario que cada escuela de PR (en todos los niveles de K-12), pudiera beneficiarse con este poderoso y necesario Proyecto de Ciencia computacional . 

This is a really interesting project. 

If the only outcome was that students became more interested in computing, that would be great. But it would also be interesting to see whether or not they understood the computing concepts they used and understood ho to apply them to other contexts.  

We would like to also acknowledge the great work of other team members and collaborators we could not include in our list of presenters:

• Analia Rao (https://www.ceismc.gatech.edu/about/staffdirectory/analia-e-rao)


• Stephen Garret (https://music.gatech.edu/people/stephen-garrett)


• Pascua Padró Collazo (https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascua-padro/?originalSubdomain=pr)


• And our partners form The Findings Group (https://thefindingsgroup.org/our-team/):


• Tom McKlin


• Taneisha Lee


• Emily Bryant

This work would not have been possible without you.

For students who do get excited about computing through this experience, what do you think is their next step?

 Hello!  What a beautiful project that hits all of the right notes ;)

Watching your video made me first ask exactly how is coding mingled with music, and so I read a little bit more about EarSketch on your website.  What a clean and attractive platform, and I also loved your other video with the students pitching the idea.

So that I can understand the 'nuts and bolts' - it seems that a student can start with neither musical nor coding experience, and if so, the site has a library of "sound collections" from which they can choose to mix using various pre-built coding functions - is that the idea?

But then I saw in the video and this chat references to students making their own music and choreographing dance, etc.  So they can record and add to the sound collection?

Are you able to add commercial music to the sound collections or only open source music?

And one thought - although I am not native to Puerto Rico, I am learning more about Bomba - there are many groups in Mayagüez, and I see a resurgence among many young people.  Is Bomba included in your collection?

¡Excelente trabajo y que siguen tocando!

Excited to hear about this project and curious to learn more about what impact you expect to see in terms of computational thinking skills.  Also, not being familiar with EarSketch, can you describe more what children get to do?

Developing CT skills through music and fine arts is an exciting idea.  Congratulations on this exciting project that provides entry into CS.