Ethnocomputing.
Adinkra Computing.
Project Overview.
The Asante people in Ghana use Adinkra symbols in their culture as a way of representing their history and beliefs. Each Adinkra symbol has a different meaning and these symbols are found in sculptures, architecture, and on cloths. There is much more that can be learned about Adinkra symbols, cloths, and their meanings at http://csdt.rpi.edu/african/adinkra/culture.html .
Developed from these symbols is a computer software, C-Snap, that allows us to reverse engineer these symbols and discover the algorithms that were used years and years ago to create them. Because we are combining the culture of the Asante people with STEM; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; on a computer we call this teaching method Ethnocomputing.
The tool we use to teach teach these STEM principles is, as I mentioned before, C-Snap. You can access this tool at http://community.csdt.rpi.edu/applications/17 . This program has already been developed and improved upon a lot since it first was created. Through this tool there is much that can be taught to young people about geometry, graphing, and computer programming. While in Ghana I was doing research on this tool; this involved writing lesson plans centered around the software, doing professional developmet workshops with highschool teachers, collecting video screen captures of students and teachers using the tool, conducting interviews, taking field notes, writing ethnography reports, and improving the software.
Adding 'Goals' to Software.
A goals button was added to the interface which opens a library of Adinkra symbols with their image and description.
For the goals feature I created our own copy right free reference library using Adobe Illustrator.
Professional Development Workshop.
The purpose of professional development workshops was to introduce ICT teachers to CSnap and how computational thinking can be taught with Adinkra. During workshops five computer science topics were taught: agile software design, flow of contrrol, looping, variables, and conditionals. An example of a looping lesson is shown below.
CSnap Unplugged.
One challenge we faced with implementing Adinkra Computing into Ghanaian school's curriculum was the lack of computers; maybe the school had no computers at all or maybe they'd have five computers for 500 students. To overcome this challenge the question must be asked, how do we teach computer programming without computers? Our answer to this was CSnap Unplugged, which took CSnap's computer interface and replicated it off the computer.
Field Visits.
