EDUC389b freewrite

EDUC389b freewrite Freewrite:

Take a few moments to think about your ethnographic research participants. What social structures are brought to bear upon them in their daily lives? Is the social setting in which they move one of danger or challenge? What historical processes are revealed in these structures? What tactics have they developed to best withstand or exploit the social structures they contend with on a daily basis?

I want to conduct an ethnography of a cohort of students I taught throughout middle school, as they navigate high school, with a focus on computational literacies. Considering Computer Science as an institutionalized academic subject, what has happened to their enthusiasms and positive identities as computer scientists and makers of games, stories, art? Have they found outlets to sustain them? Have they been pushed aside by what feel like more serious academic concerns of high school? Most schools my students went to do not offer Computer Science, or it does not feel the same as it did in middle school. 

Considering informal spaces, with which literacies do my students participate on a daily basis? Many, if not most or all of my former students have smart phones and participate deeply in digital spaces mediating every aspect of their school lives. Who are they on Facebook and in group texts? Do they connect these worlds with identities with powerful agentic selves with respect to the technologies that sustain the spaces?