Curricular Materials

Expand Latinx Learners’ Authentic Experiences in Computer Programming

The curriculum was designed for and renovated through the participation and feedback of middle school students. It integrates basics of Computer Programming and Mathematics concepts and activities needed to represent digital video and color images. It draws on the almost natural motivation of users, middle school students, with digital image and video. The curriculum contains two Levels. Level-1 introduces the concepts of image and video representations. Level-2 takes these basic concepts to a next step by introducing object operations connected to videos, images, and even robots. The curriculum was implemented in an afterschool program through collaborative student and facilitator (undergraduate engineering student with a middle school student) work in small groups. So, they could think together about what the presented problems and activities. The curriculum material also requires users to work through the concepts using in pencil-and-paper and short programming exercises to ensure that they comprehend the target concepts.

The Level I of the curriculum introduces users to basics of Linux and Python code in order to program images and videos from the pixel level. For this, students learn about the coordinate systems to represent images and videos, and related concepts such as binary and hexadecimal numbers to construct color images. The final projects require users to develop their own video representations based on their interests. Level 1 is covered in the seven sessions listed below. You can access these sessions by clicking on the respective links also provided below.