Thanks for your question. We visited the four sites every week for six weeks. We have 70 different students who signed in during the course of the six week. In-terms of demographic, the majority of students who attended were early teens/pre-teens. We do not have the specific race/gender of all students who attended (they were not required to provide this information); however, the majority of neighborhoods we worked in were majority minority neighborhoods.

FAB PROJECT! How long were the sessions?

Thank you Lisa. The sessions were 4 hours weekly at each site.

Thank you for your question. In addition to its popularity among youth, Minecraft has many computational components that have been integrated into the game itself, including logic gates, computer programming, and design. In our work, we are designing worlds for youth to engage in these computational activities, paying particular attention to computational thinking practices (e.g., algorithmic thinking, debugging, and conditional logic) and computer programming.

Here is an example of a sample session: https://youtu.be/xroUaY5ZaFo

The video shows the energy and enthusiasm of the young people. The challenge is how to sustain it over time and capitalize on it. Any ideas on how to do that?

Thanks for your comment and question, Vivian. That is our challenge moving forward. This summer we are taking the mobile hub back to locations we visited last summer to build on the connections we made.

Hi Susan: I agree that this model can work in more rural environments. At the present time we do not have plans to expand to smaller communities in Illinois, but taking resources and relevant experiences to youth — and designing making activities that can be supported even without Internet — would be a a great solution.

For this initial pilot, we did not collect data on interets and plans for the future. Our survey focused more on the activities students engaged in and their interactions during the program. However, this summer we are planning to collect more information about their interests and technical experiences outside of the program. Thanks for your question.

Hi Michelle, Thank you for your question. We used the Connected Mentor Framework (http://connectedmentor.com/) to develop our training. Mentors had two weeks of training before the session started. All mentors had prior experience working with youth. During the training we familiarized mentors with the content and the connected learning framework. We also stressed and showed mentors how to build social relationships with youth, as well as facilitate relationships among youth. Another element we stressed was modeling learning. Most mentors were not experts in Minecraft or computer science, and we stressed to them that they did not have to be, that learning from and with youth was preferred. Let me know if you have other questions.

Hi Leslie, Minecraft has a huge community around it, so there are a lot of fabulous learning activities and challenges already out in the ether. Thus we are currently focused on making these learning opportunities visible to youth by modifying Minecraft to reveal them in-game.

Thank you Lisa for your kind words!

Thank you so much for your kind words and support!

Thank you for the support!

Hi Angie, Thank you for your question. We did not have a formal career pathway in our program. But it is something that could add a lot of value to the program. Thank you for the suggestion.