Electronic textiles are a part of the increasingly popular maker movement that champions existing do-it-yourself activities. As making activities broaden from Maker Faires and fabrication spaces in children's museums, science centers, and community organizations to school classrooms, they provide new opportunities for learning while challenging many current conventions of schooling. In this article, authors Yasmin Kafai, Deborah Fields, and Kristin Searle consider one disruptive area of making: electronic textiles. The authors examine high school students’ experiences making e-textile designs across three workshops that took place over the course of a school year and discuss individual students’ experiences making e-textiles in the context of broader findings regarding themes of transparency, aesthetics, and gender. They also examine the role of e-textiles as both an opportunity for, and challenge in, breaking down traditional barriers to computing.

In this article, we examine the use of electronic textiles (e-textiles) for introducing key computational concepts and practices while broadening perceptions about computing. The starting point of our work was the design and implementation of a curriculum module using the LilyPad Arduino in a pre-AP high school computer science class. To understand students' learning, we analyzed the structure and functionality of their circuits and program code as well as their design approaches to making and debugging their e-textile creations and their views of computing. We also studied students' changing perceptions of computing. Our discussion addresses the need for and design of scaffolded challenges and the potential for using crafts materials and activities such as e-textiles for designing introductory courses that can broaden participation in computing. . 2014. A crafts-oriented approach to computing in high school: Introducing computational concepts, practices, and perspectives with electronic textiles.

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There have been many efforts to increase access and participation of indigenous communities in computer science education using ethnocomputing. In this paper, we extend culturally responsive computing by using electronic textiles that leverage traditional crafting and sewing practices to help students learn about engineering and computing as they also engage with local indigenous knowledges. Electronic textiles include sewable microcontrollers that can be connected to sensors and actuators by stitching circuits with conductive thread. We present findings from a junior high Native Arts class and an academically-oriented summer camp in which Native American youth ages 12-15 years created individual and collective e-textile designs using the LilyPad Arduino. In our discussion we address how a culturally responsive open design approach to ethnocomputing with e-textile activities can provide a productive but also challenging context for design agency and cultural connections for American Indian youth, and how these findings can inform the design of a broader range of introductory computational activities for all.

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