IDC Poster madness script

IDC Poster madness script Before graduate school, I was a high-school English teacher and a middle-school computer science teacher. I noticed a lot of parallels between literacy communities grounded in text and in code.  In this study, we hypothesize that there are comparable practices between the two, and ask whether strength in one is associated with growth in the other. If you’re already an active participant in social reading and writing, can that help you grow as a computer scientist? What about the other way around? 

To answer this question, we led workshops using interactive fiction, with is like both text and code. We developed a web app for interactive fiction over the course of three workshops. We developed a multi-faceted measure of literacy for each medium, and found some support confirming our hypothesis. 

As we think about CS as a mainstream subject in school, these interactions between literacies represent possibilities to enhance equity for students who are excluded from participation in one or the other. I am particularly interested in talking about conceptual frameworks, measures, and methods for studying computational literacy, as Andy diSessa defines it. I hope you’ll come by.