Neon signs, underground tunnels and Chinese American identity : the many dimension of visual Chinatown

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2008."June 2008."Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-113).What is Chinatown? Is it an imaginary construct, a real location, or a community? Is it an ethnic enclave only available to insiders, or a fabricated environment designed specifically for tourists? This thesis attempts to reconcile the multiple ways in which Chinatowns in the U.S. are conceived, understood, and used by both insiders and outsiders of the community. By using Henri Lefebvre's triad of spatial analysis (as detailed in The Production of Space), I create an analytical narrative through which to understand the layered dimensions of Chinatown through the realms of perceived, conceived and lived space. In the first chapter, I closely analyze the visual landscape of an actual location, Tyler Street in Boston's Chinatown, in order to decipher the spatial (and therefore economic and cultural) practices that shape the environment. In chapter 2, I discuss the representations of Chinatown, or the space as it has been conceived by media makers including photographers, writers and filmmakers. By looking at these through the lens of tourism, I create a framework for analyzing the many cinematic depictions of the neighborhood. In the last chapter, I return to the actual spaces of lived Chinatowns, in particular San Francisco's Chinatown as captured in the independent film Chan is Missing (1981), and Boston's Chinatown, as exemplified by three Chinese restaurants in the area. I use Erving Goffman's idea of everyday performance in order to dissect the ways in which people and spaces perform "Chinese-ness" for outsiders of the community. By focusing all three chapters on the material, tangible artifacts of the physical environment, or what I call 'Visual Chinatown,' I hope to create a unified vision of how spaces are created in popular culture.by Debora A. Lui.S.M

Framing Computational Thinking for Computational Literacies in K-12 Education

The last decade has seen an increased interest in promoting computing education for all, focused on the idea of “computational thinking.” Currently, three framings for promoting computational thinking in K-12 education have been proposed, emphasizing either (1) skill and competency building, (2) creative expression and participation, or (3) social justice and reflection. While each of these emphases is valuable and needed, their narrow focus can obscure important issues and miss critical transformational opportunities for empowering students as competent, creative, and critical agents. We argue that these computational framings should be seen as literacies, thereby historicizing and situating computer science with respect to broader educational concerns and providing new directions for how schools can help students to actively participate in designing their digital futures

Stitching Codeable Circuits: High School Students\u27 Learning About Circuitry and Coding with Electronic Textiles

Learning about circuitry by connecting a battery, light bulb, and wires is a common activity in many science classrooms. In this paper, we expand students’ learning about circuitry with electronic textiles, which use conductive thread instead of wires and sewable LEDs instead of lightbulbs, by integrating programming sensor inputs and light outputs and examining how the two domains interact.We implemented an electronic textiles unit with 23 high school students ages 16–17 years who learned how to craft and code circuits with the LilyPad Arduino, an electronic textile construction kit. Our analyses not only confirm significant increases in students’ understanding of functional circuits but also showcase students’ ability in designing and remixing program code for controlling circuits. In our discussion, we address opportunities and challenges of introducing codeable circuit design for integrating maker activities that include engineering and computing into classrooms

Communicating Computational Concepts and Practices Within High School Students’ Portfolios of Making Electronic Textiles

Portfolios have recently gained traction within computer science education as a way to assess students’ computational thinking and practices. Whereas traditional assessments such as exams tend to capture learning within artificial settings at a single point in time, portfolios provide more authentic opportunities to document a trajectory of students’ learning and practices in everyday contexts. Furthermore, because communication itself has been defined as an important computational thinking practice, portfolios give students a place to practice this skill in the classroom. In this study, we report on the implementation of a digital portfolio with a class of 21 high school students used to capture the process of creating of an electronic textile mural project. While students’ understanding of computational concepts were only partially captured within the portfolios, their engagements with computational practices—such as debugging and iteration—were better highlighted. Much of this was due to the students’ existing communicative strategies themselves, both in terms of how precise they were in describing issues, as well as how they leveraged images and code to explain their process. Recommendations for designing more effective portfolio assessments are discussed, which include greater emphasis on creating shared classroom discourse, and leveraging students’ existing experiences with multimedia

Mortality from gastrointestinal congenital anomalies at 264 hospitals in 74 low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries: a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study

Summary Background Congenital anomalies are the fifth leading cause of mortality in children younger than 5 years globally. Many gastrointestinal congenital anomalies are fatal without timely access to neonatal surgical care, but few studies have been done on these conditions in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). We compared outcomes of the seven most common gastrointestinal congenital anomalies in low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries globally, and identified factors associated with mortality. Methods We did a multicentre, international prospective cohort study of patients younger than 16 years, presenting to hospital for the first time with oesophageal atresia, congenital diaphragmatic hernia, intestinal atresia, gastroschisis, exomphalos, anorectal malformation, and Hirschsprung’s disease. Recruitment was of consecutive patients for a minimum of 1 month between October, 2018, and April, 2019. We collected data on patient demographics, clinical status, interventions, and outcomes using the REDCap platform. Patients were followed up for 30 days after primary intervention, or 30 days after admission if they did not receive an intervention. The primary outcome was all-cause, in-hospital mortality for all conditions combined and each condition individually, stratified by country income status. We did a complete case analysis. Findings We included 3849 patients with 3975 study conditions (560 with oesophageal atresia, 448 with congenital diaphragmatic hernia, 681 with intestinal atresia, 453 with gastroschisis, 325 with exomphalos, 991 with anorectal malformation, and 517 with Hirschsprung’s disease) from 264 hospitals (89 in high-income countries, 166 in middleincome countries, and nine in low-income countries) in 74 countries. Of the 3849 patients, 2231 (58·0%) were male. Median gestational age at birth was 38 weeks (IQR 36–39) and median bodyweight at presentation was 2·8 kg (2·3–3·3). Mortality among all patients was 37 (39·8%) of 93 in low-income countries, 583 (20·4%) of 2860 in middle-income countries, and 50 (5·6%) of 896 in high-income countries (p<0·0001 between all country income groups). Gastroschisis had the greatest difference in mortality between country income strata (nine [90·0%] of ten in lowincome countries, 97 [31·9%] of 304 in middle-income countries, and two [1·4%] of 139 in high-income countries; p≤0·0001 between all country income groups). Factors significantly associated with higher mortality for all patients combined included country income status (low-income vs high-income countries, risk ratio 2·78 [95% CI 1·88–4·11], p<0·0001; middle-income vs high-income countries, 2·11 [1·59–2·79], p<0·0001), sepsis at presentation (1·20 [1·04–1·40], p=0·016), higher American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) score at primary intervention (ASA 4–5 vs ASA 1–2, 1·82 [1·40–2·35], p<0·0001; ASA 3 vs ASA 1–2, 1·58, [1·30–1·92], p<0·0001]), surgical safety checklist not used (1·39 [1·02–1·90], p=0·035), and ventilation or parenteral nutrition unavailable when needed (ventilation 1·96, [1·41–2·71], p=0·0001; parenteral nutrition 1·35, [1·05–1·74], p=0·018). Administration of parenteral nutrition (0·61, [0·47–0·79], p=0·0002) and use of a peripherally inserted central catheter (0·65 [0·50–0·86], p=0·0024) or percutaneous central line (0·69 [0·48–1·00], p=0·049) were associated with lower mortality. Interpretation Unacceptable differences in mortality exist for gastrointestinal congenital anomalies between lowincome, middle-income, and high-income countries. Improving access to quality neonatal surgical care in LMICs will be vital to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 3.2 of ending preventable deaths in neonates and children younger than 5 years by 2030

Designing E-Textiles Together: Creating More Equitable Collaborative E-Textiles Projects for High School Classrooms

E-textiles provide accessible on-ramps to computing and STEM through three overlapping and interdependent domains—crafting, coding, and circuitry—that offer different pathways for student learning (Kafai et al., 2014; Searle, Litts, & Kafai, 2018). As a result, e-textiles design projects have been adopted for teaching computing and STEM in high school contexts including the Exploring Computer Science (ECS) curriculum (Goode & Margolis, 2011). With the expansive adoption of e-textiles in K-12, our team specifically examined how to design collaborative e-textiles projects for high school classrooms asking: What are the design tradeoffs of different collaborative learning arrangements in e-textiles?We present findings from two workshops with the same high school students across two academic years (sophomore and junior) with a total of 24 participants (18 participated in both workshops).Students collaborated in teams of 4-5 in the first workshop, and in pairs in the second. We collected a range of qualitative data: reflective interviews, photographs of design artifacts, and fieldnotes. We completed an iterative analysis process primarily employing line-by-line coding using a combination of descriptive and in vivo methods and worked together to theme data (Saldaña, 2009) that highlight design tradeoffs of group versus pair learning arrangements.Our findings provide evidence that a paired learning arrangement, inspired by pair programming (Denner, Werner, Campe, & Ortiz, 2014), yields more productive collaborative discourse and expertise exchange than team-based arrangements successful in robotics design activities (Baretto, 2012; Litts, Kafai, & Dieckmeyer, 2014; Litts, Lui, Widman, Walker, & Kafai, 2017a; Lui, Litts, Widman, Walker, & Kafai, 2016). As we further explored this phenomenon we also found that two phases of collaborative work greatly impact successful student projects: (1) circuit design, and (2) project construction (Litts, Kafai, & Dieckmeyer, 2015; Litts et al., 2017a; Lui et al., 2016). First, as part of the design process, students draw a circuit design, or blueprint of circuit connections, for their project that pairs refer to throughout their project construction. Due to the interdependencies across e-textiles domains, the circuit design inherently impacts the aesthetics (crafting) and function (coding) of e-textiles projects. Circuit design, therefore, requires an understanding of codeable circuitry, and demands a negotiation of design plans and expertise exchange between partners. Students reported that the circuit design phase was more collaborative and conversation as focused on aesthetic and functional circuit design decisions (e.g., where to put lights or a blink pattern for the lights) (Litts, Kafai, Lui, Widman, & Walker, 2017b). Second, students mediate project construction across physical (crafting) and digital (coding) modes. The multimodal nature of this phase results in a range of collaborative styles from equitably sharing tasks across modes to firmly dividing tasks between modes (Litts et al., 2017a; Lui et al., 2016). Students reported the project construction phase was more individualized and their interactions focused on clarifying the distribution of workload by explicitly assigning tasks across domains with their partner. Collectively, this work provides insights not only to understanding of collaborative e-textiles, but also collaborative learning arrangements in interdisciplinary, multimodal design spaces more generally

Pair Physical Computing: High School Students’ Practices and Perceptions of Collaborative Coding and Crafting With Electronic Textiles

Background and Context: Physical computing involves complex negotiations of multiple, on and off-screen tasks, which calls for research on how to best structure collaborative work to ensure equitable learning. Objective: We focus on how pairs self-organized their multi-domain tasks in physical computing, and how their social interactions supported or inhibited productive collaboration. Method: We conducted a 30+ hour physical computing workshop where high school student pairs created interactive electronic textile signs. We recorded how students shared or allocated their tasks in fieldnotes and looked for reasons why this occurred through student post-interviews. Findings: Students worked collaboratively on project planning, which involved discussion and decision-making, but individually during project construction, which involved physical execution of their plan. The quality of students’ social interaction was seemingly linked to how viewed their partner as a socioemotional resource. Implications: Inherent qualities of the different domains of physical computing and how students view their partners in socioemotional terms can shape the productivity of student collaborative learning

Communicating About Computational Thinking: Understanding Affordances of Portfolios for Assessing High School Students’ Computational Thinking and Participation Practices

Background and Context: While assessment of computational thinking concepts, practices, and perspectives is at the forefront of K-12 CS education, supporting student communication about computation has received relatively little attention. Objective: To examine the usability of process-based portfolios for capturing students’ communication about their computational practices regarding the process of making electronic textile projects. Method: We examined the portfolios of 248 high school students in 15 introductory CS classrooms from largely underserved communities, using a formal rubric (top-down) to code computational communication and an open-coding scheme (bottom-up) to identify computational practices described. Findings: Students demonstrated stronger abilities to communicate about computation using text than visuals. They also reported under-assessed CT practices like debugging, iterating, and collaborating. Students of experienced e-textile teachers performed substantially better than those with novice e-textile teachers. Implications: Portfolios provide a viable addition to traditional performance or survey assessments and meet a need to promote communication skills

Science Lab as Maker Studio: Creating and Critiquing Electronic Textiles in High School Class

The push for a more widespread implementation of maker activities into K-12 classrooms requires adaptation of out-of-school makerspaces and practices. In this paper, we draw on research that has emerged around the studio model that brings critique practices from art and architecture into computing class. As an illustration, we examined a maker studio in which a class of 23 high school students worked in teams and with art students to develop an interactive electronic textile design. Our analyses focus on how the structure of critiques, presentations, and reflections in the maker studio impacted students’ design process. In the discussion, we address what we learned about how these features should be integrated with programming activities