Burke, Q., & Kafai, Y.B. (2010). Programming & Storytelling: Opportunities for learning about coding & composition. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children.
This paper discussed an after school program, held for 6 weeks, with middle school students. The researchers introduced Scratch (a beginner computer programming language) in writing terms, encouraging the students to create a setting, antagonist, protagonist and narrative story with the programming language. This framed the programming language as a tool for writing stories, rather than just creating a computer program.
Eleven students participated twice each week for one hour. At the conclusion of the program, each student shared their story. Data was collected by field notes, surveys, videos, and the projects. All kids included object-oriented & sequential programming concepts, half used loops, and a few used Boolean variables and conditionals (if-then). Nine out of ten kids said they learned more about programming while only 6 out of 10 said they learned more about storytelling.
7/10 Jetts. Based on the abstract, I was hoping for more description of the connections between programming and storytelling, but, the paper was mostly an (enjoyable) overview of the pilot study the authors conducted. The abstract was kind of a tease.
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