T6: Establishing a national research community on Digital Literacy and Computing Education

New educational subjects aimed at Digital Literacy and Computing Education are difficult to design but even more difficult to implement and make sustainable. Experience suggests that “implementation periods” should be counted in decades rather than years and that failures are lurking around every corner. This talk invite participants to debate and reflect on how research and researchers can help improve the sustainability of new Computing/Digital literacy subjects in schools. This is done by presenting the Danish Research Center for Digital Technology Comprehension as an ‘infrastructure’ for the social, material, political and organizational structures needed to sustain the new ‘Technology Comprehension’ subject area in Danish schools.

This lecture will describe a national research agenda into how students and teachers can have hands-on experiences with the technical concepts and practices behind emerging digital technologies. Through this agenda, the Center for Computational Thinking & Design has explored what students should learn about AI, augmented reality, and cryptography – and how students can have concrete experiences with the possibilities and limitations of these technologies. Karl-Emil will describe how researchers have collaborated with teachers and schools to develop educational tools and activities that enable students to engage with the data science practices behind AI, the computer vision techniques behind augmented reality, and the encryption protocols behind cryptography. Based on this work, he will discuss how hands-on activities with the concepts and practices behind digital technologies are crucial for students’ ability to reflect on their implications and imagine alternative uses.

In England, in 2014, a new computing curriculum was introduced in all schools for students as young as 5. In this lecture, Jane will provide a range of perspectives from the last ten years to give examples of how digital empowerment has been enacted (or not) in computing and general classroom lessons. She has been a primary (K-5) teacher, community builder, teacher trainer, resource developer and is now a researcher. She will draw out the challenges that have been faced, highlight key factors that she has seen as important in helping schools implement curriculum change, and consider what lessons learned might be useful to the Danish context.