Computational Literacies Lab

Cross-course collaboration

Impossible Project logo Mozilla logo

In fall 2024, Critical Computational Literacies will be structured as an extended case study of how computational literacies can be used to think about the resources and challenges in a school community. This project is a collaboration between:

  • Dr. Melissa Meola Shanahan's high school students at Lafayette International High School
  • Prof. Jay Barber's undergraduate Technical Communication students
  • Dr. Chris Proctor's graduate students in Critical Computational Literacies.

Because Critical Computational Literacies is technically a remote/async class, students are warmly welcomed to participate in in-person collaboration but it is not required. Regardless of whether you are able to join for any of the in-person collaboration, all CCL students will participate in the collaboration through the case study assignment.

Impossible question

Digital technologies aren’t going away. How might we create safe, authentic, and democratic schools? Digital technologies, from cell phones to social media to AI, have become part of our families, our communities, and our schools, transforming each. Schools, which are a meeting place of individuals, families, and communities and the focus of this project, have responded to new technologies in a variety of ways: trying to ban them, regulating them through policies and rules, and allowing themselves to transform to better fit the digital world.

Identifying focus areas

The first step in our collaboraion is to identify focus areas: specific technologies and specific groups of people being affected by them, which we want to research. Each course disucsssed possible focus areas and shared their ideas with the other courses via video.

  • October 23, 3:30-5pm, Lafayette International High School. Agenda: Exporing focus areas.

Collecting stories

Once we have some ideas about what we want to focus on, we will spend three sessions gathering students' stories around how computing (cell phones, AI, social media...) have affected their lives.

  • October 30, 3:30-5pm, Lafayette International High School. Sharing our stories.
  • November 6, 3:30-5pm, Lafayette International High School. [Recording our stories}(@/courses/ccl/collaboration/recording_stories.md)

Analyzing stories and imagining futures

We will gather students' stories and analyze them thematically, looking for patterns in students' experiences. We will also turn our attention to our impossible question, proposing ideas for how we might create safe, authentic, and democratic schools.

  • November 13, 3:30-5pm, Lafayette International High School. Discuss themes in stories.
  • November 20, UB North Campus. Imagine futures.
  • December 4, UB South Campus 5-6:30pm. Final presentation.