Re-Discovering and Re-Creating African American Historical Accounts through Mobile Apps: The Role of Mobile Technology in History Education

Abstract

This paper describes a case study of a program called WATCH: Workshop for Actively Thinking Computationally and Historically. The focus of the program and this paper was on using mobile application development to promote historical thinking using a plantation site visit as the focus of inquiry. WATCH was delivered during an academic enrichment youth program at a major research university in the Southeast and served a total of 30 African American and Latino high school students from low socio-economic backgrounds. Through the theoretical framework of historical thinking, this case study provides descriptions of the class sessions, students’ perceptions of and interests in history and students level of historical thinking through their apps. We make suggestions about how the instructional activities could be adapted for classrooms, discuss the tensions of using technology and inquiry pedagogy to support and promote historical learning, and review the program's impact on students’ agency as learners and critical consumers and producers of historical accounts.

Identifying Youths’ Spheres of Influence through Participatory Design

“…More traditional computing and programming activities also purposefully include and allow for cultural integration. The Scratch platform (Maloney et al, 2010;Resnick et al, 2009), EarSketch (Magerko et al, 2016), MIT App Inventor (Jimenez & Gardner-McCune, 2015;King et al, 2014;Tissenbaum et al, 2017;Vakil, 2014), and the Exploring Computer Science curriculum (Goode & Margolis, 2011;Ryoo et al, 2013) including adaptations to specific cities (Mejias et al, 2018;Washington et al, 2012;Washington & Burge, 2013) all teach computer science while also creating opportunities for youth to utilize and celebrate their various cultures.…”

Incorporating android conversational agents in m‐learning apps

“…King et al . have recently investigated mobile app development as a means of engaging students in creating historical narratives (King et al ., ). The MIT AppInventor constructivist learning tool is proposed to help students with no programming experience to design apps through a drag‐and‐drop visual programming language.…”

“…The proposed model, which integrates voice recognition capabilities, can be adapted using some strategies for increasing interest of learning, fostering motivation, self-efficacy and impacting handicapped students' attitude to study. King et al have recently investigated mobile app development as a means of engaging students in creating historical narratives (King et al, 2014). The MIT AppInventor constructivist learning tool 1 is proposed to help students with no programming experience to design apps through a drag-and-drop visual programming language.…”

Using App inventor & history as a gateway to engage African American students in computer science

“…Our first attempt at exploring the integration of computational thinking into a history course was through the design and implementation of the Workshop for African-Americans Thinking Computational and Historically (WATCH) Program [8]. We envisioned an opportunity for students to learn Computer Science (CS) i n the context of a history course for which they were already enrolled and to leverage students' interest in mobile apps though mobile application development to help them learn History and Computer Science.…”