| This paper describes the latest phase in the on-going development of the educational software known as Culturally Situated Design Tools (CSDTs). CSDTs are based on the idea that many cultural design---native beadwork, urban graffiti, and cornrow hairstyles, for example---include math and computing ideas in their creation. But these math and computing ideas are too "embedded" to see them directly. By simulating these patterns, those embedded ideas are brought to the surface. Thus the tools are primarily directed towards low-income, underrepresented youth: to help them see that they have "ownership" over math and computing ideas, and dispel myths of genetic or cultural determinism. This thesis examines the demands that these cultural simulations put upon the software. Intuitively it is assumed that the math and computing for Native American designs would have to be the same as that of African designs, but simulations help show that there are many conventions in formal systems, and thus keeping true to cultural differences sometimes requires different conventions. These differences were particularly well illuminated by my attempt to create a new CSDT, "Animator," which incorporates multiple cultural practices. The Animator approach makes use of cultural variation as a kind of "scaffolding" in which users gain increasing knowledge and skill with the software, moving from culturally specific applications to broader use. With each "step," the user is given more and more freedom. By the end, the user can create anything they want, but by going through this process, I hypothesized that they would be more at ease with the mathematics and computing ideas they learned at the beginning, and more likely to continue to incorporate culturally creative materials rather than simply replicating video games and other commercial media as is often seen in similar environments such as MIT's Scratch. |
