Kristin Searle

• Utah State University

While research has shown the value of learning through play and creative production, less is known about the use of playful and creative assessment for ongoing learning. We therefore use this symposium to address the following questions: how can educators use creative and playful assessment techniques and tools to engage students in processes of le...

In July 2021, Computer Science (CS) standards were officially added as a subject area within the K-12 Montana content standards. However, due to a lack of professional development and pre-service preparation in CS, schools and teachers in Montana are underprepared to implement these standards. Montana is also a unique state, since American Indian e...

STEM is notoriously uninviting to wide swaths of the population [1–4]. [...]

Children’s literature provides elementary teachers and students the opportunity to critically engage in the world around them. However, too often teachers choose not to engage students in discussions of complex social issues out of a sense of fear or discomfort. In this paper, we explore the reflections of 11 teachers who chose to engage their stud...

This study seeks to understand the daily violence endured by queer youth. We use Queer Battle Fatigue, Ahmed’s cultural politics of emotion, and STEM identity theories to make meaning of youth’s experience. We draw from audio recordings and transcriptions of 15 queer youth over the course of a summer and fall LGBTQ+ maker camp in a rural town in th...

This article shares an approach for engaging elementary teachers in integrated STEM and social studies through literature.

Physics educators often struggle with how to tackle complex content such as electric potential. As a result, high school students are typically not engaged in developing a deep understanding of this concept. Historically, such engagement has been perceived as too challenging and abstract. To date no process exists for engaging students in a meaning...

Many students fail to see themselves as potential scientists or engineers based on established stereotypes of who "belongs" in STEM. Thus, identity and the extent to which it is considered compatible with STEM engagement is a fundamental issue of access. This poster reports on the development and initial validation of a new approach to quantify shi...

Often, in secondary science classrooms, hands-on learning engages students in projects that are 1) conceived of by the teacher and 2) deconstructed at the end of class so that future students can use materials. These factors create a lack of ownership and engagement for students. Maker technologies create opportunities to disrupt the narrative arou...

This paper shares the design and process of development for a data visualization project that centers computing squarely in social studies classroom instruction for social justice. Circuit Playground Express are programmed to engage students in engaging with and creating visualizations of the Great Migration of Black folx from the American South du...

We show how non-traditional approaches to engaging young women in computing and engineering can impact their sense of what STEM is and who can do it. We designed and implemented a four-day Animal Investigators camp in which rural youth designed technologies for the animals in their lives. We wanted to understand the ways in which young peoples' pri...

This presentation presents a framework for characterizing how school librarians facilitate STEM-rich Making informal programming in their libraries. This framework is an extension of a framework used in teacher education research accounting for how teachers using the same curriculum have varying enactments in their individual classrooms. A case stu...

This paper presents a framework for characterizing how school librarians facilitate STEM-rich Making informal programming in their libraries. This framework is an extension of a framework used in teacher education research accounting for how teachers using the same curriculum have varying enactments in their individual classrooms. A case study of t...

This paper examines how working with sewable, programmable electronics embedded in textiles (e-textiles) impacted the self-perceptions and actions of two middle school girls from non-dominant communities as they navigated their place within science class. Using analytic induction (Erickson, 1986), we explore the phenomena around their experiences a...

Research on productive failure has examined the dimensions which are most beneficial for students’ learning of well-defined canonical problems in math and science. But failure plays an equally important role in solving open-ended, or ill-defined, design problems that have become prominent in many STEM-oriented maker activities. In understanding the...

Attending to issues of equity in making1 demands that we work closely with communities, focusing on what it is made, how it is made, for whom, and in what contexts. Rather than exploring making exclusively as a pathway to STEM learning, we examine how Indigenous youth learned about and documented community-based making using the Augmented Reality a...

Maker-projects have often been implemented in K-12 schools to foster the emergence of identity, develop maker mindsets, fuel creation, and master STEM skills and content. This paper explores the ability of an electronic textiles, or e-textile, maker project to develop deeper science learning within a unit where computer science, technology, enginee...

Most interventions with “maker” technologies take place outside of school or out of core area classrooms. However, intervening in schools holds potential for reaching much larger numbers of students and the opportunity to shift instructional dynamics in classrooms. This paper shares one such intervention where electronic textiles (sewable circuits)...

After six months of observation at three middle school libraries and one public library implementing Maker-oriented programs, we propose four design hypotheses derived from qualitative data analysis and initial testing through design implementation. These design hypotheses address how public and school libraries serving adolescent youth can better...

Learning to use a construction kit to design, make, and program electronic textiles (e-textiles) has been found to be a rich context for students' learning of crafting, engineering and programming. We propose the development of what we call a 'deconstruction' kit---the design of faulty e-textile artifacts that students need to de- and reconstruct--...

In this paper, we present an electronic textiles project called the "bracelet hack" that is intended to facilitate the introduction of making activities into classrooms. The project's design significantly decreases the costs and amount of classroom time that must be spent on the construction aspects of the project while still engaging students in d...

By providing access to hands-on activities and the physical and digital tools necessary to complete them, maker activities encourage cross-disciplinary, interest-driven learning and problem solving in schools. However, maker movement efforts to broaden participation into computer science have largely ignored Indigenous populations. In this disserta...

We draw attention to the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender in computing education by examining the experiences of ten American Indian boys (12-14 years old) who participated in introductory computing activities with electronic textiles. To date, the use of electronic textiles (e-textiles) materials in introductory computing activities have...

The Maker Movement has been successful in refocusing attention on the value of hand work, but heritage craft practices remain noticeably absent. We argue that combining heritage craft practices, like those found in many American Indian communities throughout the United States, with maker practices presents an opportunity to examine a rich, if conte...

Electronic textiles are a part of the increasingly popular maker movement that champions existing do-it-yourself activities. As making activities broaden from Maker Faires and fabrication spaces in children's museums, science centers, and community organizations to school classrooms, they provide new opportunities for learning while challenging man...

More than twenty years ago, Turkle and Papert wrote about the lack of epistemological pluralism in computing and the resulting exclusivity in the field. Although research on what constitutes a personal epistemology has expanded since then, students continue to hold narrow views of computing that are disconnected from the field at large. To align wi...

There have been many efforts to increase access and participation of indigenous communities in computer science education using ethnocomputing. In this paper, we extend culturally responsive computing by using electronic textiles that leverage traditional crafting and sewing practices to help students learn about engineering and computing as they a...

In this article, we examine the use of electronic textiles (e-textiles) for introducing key computational concepts and practices while broadening perceptions about computing. The starting point of our work was the design and implementation of a curriculum module using the LilyPad Arduino in a pre-AP high school computer science class. To understand...

In this paper, we present and discuss the use of electronic textiles (e-textiles) for introducing key computational concepts and practices and broadening participation and perceptions about computing. The starting point of our work was the design and implementation of a curriculum module using the Lilypad Arduino in a pre-AP high school class. To u...

Few studies have examined gender and game play from the perspective of boys' participation. In this article we investigate boys' play in a tween-centric virtual world called Whyville.net, which had 1.5 million registered players at the time of study. Drawing primarily upon logfile data, we developed participation profiles and case studies of three...

This chapter examines the importance of online social interactions and relationship play among tweens (10–13-year-olds) on Whyville.net, a tween virtual world populated by over 1.5 million users. Using log files and representative case studies among 595 players, three levels of quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted. First, frequency...

One challenge in assessing students' engineering and programming designs is that the problems are difficult to evaluate with pencil and paper. Projects with multiple types of designs (circuitry, coding, aesthetics) can go wrong in many ways (Resnick, Berg, & Eisenberg, 2000). Identifying, debugging, and solving these problems is at the crux of bein...

The chapter examines the importance of online social interactions and relationship play among tweens (10-13 year olds) on Whyville.net, a tween virtual world populated by over 1.5 million users. Using logfiles and representative case studies among 595 players, three levels of quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted. First, frequency an...

We examine high school students' designs with the LilyPad Arduino, an electronic textile (e-textile) construction kit used for designing programmable garments. Each kit contains a microcontroller, sensors and LED and other actuators that can be embedded in textiles. We conducted three workshops with 35 high school youth between 14-15 years in a sci...

Most research in programming and engineering focuses on students' understanding of functionality as a way to gage their learning, leaving aside aesthetic dimensions. In our work with the LilyPad Arduino, an e-textile construction kit with controller, sensors and actuators that can be embedded via conductive thread and programmed in fabric and garme...

We examine e-textile designs, a new domain combining crafts, circuitry, and programming with the LilyPad Arduino, to better understand how novice designers develop creative technical solutions. Our analyses draw from observation and interviews conducted with middle and high school students enrolled in e-textiles workshops. In the workshops, student...

Building on Csikszentmihalyi's conception of creativity as a system composed of the domain, the individual, and a field of experts who validate creative innovations, we examine a new domain of e-textiles to describe creativity. Further, we use our interviews with domain experts to outline some of the limitations of current assessment techniques to...

We examine e-textile designs, a new domain combining crafts, circuitry, and programming with the LilyPad Arduino, to better understand how novice designers develop creative technical solutions. Our analyses draw from observation and interviews conducted with middle and high school students enrolled in e-textiles workshops. In the workshops, student...

Managing problematic interactions in online communities has been a challenge since the days of early text-based, multi-user environments. Research in this area has mostly focused on adults and older teens. In this article, we examine the interactions and commentaries of tween players in Whyville.net, a virtual world with (at the time of the study)...

Millions of youth have joined virtual worlds to hang out with each other. However, capturing their interactions is no easy feat given the complexity of virtual worlds, their 24/7 availability, and distributed access from different places. In this article, we illustrate what different methods can reveal about the dating and flirting practices of twe...

Over a decade ago, Henry Jenkins (17) wrote "'Complete freedom of movement': Video Games as gendered play spaces" in which he argued that video games provide a contemporary alternative to the out of doors freedom of movement boys historically accessed. Video games operate like a 'fourth space' (a term coined by Van Vliet), a much- needed alternativ...

As online games and virtual worlds are becoming the digital public frequented by youth, they not only serve entertainment purposes but also for relationship building. Tweens, individuals between 10 and 13 years old, engage in anticipatory socialization by exploring dating and flirting in online environments. We analzyed logfiles of chat and click i...