Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Analyzing My Own Assumptions

In this blog post I will be analyzing the "yes" section of the article "Should we teach computer science in elementary school?"  by Pat Yongpradit by answering the questions in the image below. 

Screenshot of Writing Public Lives page 80.
Bottai, Sean "Photo from Sean Bottai's website", September 30th, 2015

  1. A cultural belief that is shared with the culture that the article is written in is the idea of the digital era. It is inevitable that technology is one of the most important factors of most societies today and that it is still progressing and on the rise. Another belief that is shared is that technology has the capability to create progressive learning and that technology is a tool to education. Computer science can teach people how to solve problems more efficiently. Technology also serves as a tool for educational purposes. 
  2. Most of the ideas are shared. One idea that isn't agreed upon as strongly is the emphasis put on jobs. Just because kids will be learning computer science does not mean they will take all the good jobs and make the economy super strong. It teaches them how to think progressively but it is still up to them on how to use their learning techniques they have learned through computer science. 
  3. Being that I was not taught computer science in elementary school, I struggle to understand how it would be implemented. Computer science can be a difficult topic and it may be a very challenging course for some students. The belief of educating students to their fullest capability is something that my culture also does, I have always been educated to the fullest of my capabilities. 
  4. The text was written very recently so it portrays the view on this time in history. That does not mean that I can't infer that things have changed over time. Teaching computer science in elementary school has not always been viewed as an option. Computers have not been around long enough to have the discussion of teaching computer science in elementary school. Rather than the cultural beliefs changing over time, the cultural beliefs have developed alongside the development of computers, and technology as a whole. 
Reflection: After reading the blog posts of Grace and Bailey I learned that I had similar feelings about cultural aspects of their issues and that our articles had similar trends. Grace and I both had issues that have had their perspective change over time. The views have become more progressive. With Bailey's blog I realized that we shared the same view point on cultural aspects on her topic that she decided to write about. It is important moving forward to create project two from a perspective that limits the bias. This blog post was good so the writer could explain their view point on the issue so they could get it out of their system before creating the unbiased project two. 

6 comments:

  1. While your topic is more time sensitive than mine, we both have topics that would not be the same if they were not happening now. Your statement of how this issue directly affects you demonstrates your bias, as done the fact that you agree with most of what the author is saying like I do, but I also have bias in my topic. Hopefully since we identified these biases we will be able to put them aside for this project.

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  2. Hi Hunter! I like how you draw on the importance of science in school, such as computer science. I can relate because I took computer science in high school, and found it important because it shows a new perspective on science class, being that it isn't something as common as biology or chemistry.

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  4. I agree with you that it would be difficult to implement computer science in elementary school, but it could be done. It's also hard to be unbiased when a topic is so close to you. Good luck on project 2.

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  5. I can definitely agree with you on recent events constituting this culture. With my topic, there was not a lot that I could talk about in my specific article that was directly due to events in the past. That being said, I really liked your last point about getting bias out now rather than later. It makes sense, considering within any project, there is going to be a degree of bias within it.

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  6. I love how you inferred a timeline, especially when one wasn't exactly present in the article. I like that you fully admit the limitations of your understanding (as it pertains to the teaching of computer science in elementary school). Again, a great point about the lack of direct correlation between teaching computer science and jobs. You list the shared biases well and I think you generated a fairly comprehensive list, so good job!

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