Exposing middle school girls to programming via creative tools

Authors:
Gahgene Gweon;Jane Ngai;Jenica Rangos
Affiliations:
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Venue:
INTERACT'05 Proceedings of the 2005 IFIP TC13 international conference on Human-Computer Interaction
Year:
2005

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Abstract

This paper explores design concepts and principles to engage middle school girls in learning preliminary programming concepts through different media and interaction techniques. Creating a greeting card and creating a personal avatar for an Instant Messenger (IM) were two approaches that were examined. Findings suggest that an IM avatar creation tool, with guiding principles including partial manipulation of code, immediate feedback, engaging content, reinforcement exercises, and transition from concrete to abstract examples, may interest girls to start learning programming concepts.