Technology Education for All

The bad news: tech classrooms lack diversity.
The good news: we know how to change this!

Join Paula MacDowell for an interactive workshop that emphasizes the importance of collaborating to build a diverse technology-literate society.

We will explore strategies for working together to:
* increase non-traditional enrolment
* create non-stigmatizing learning environments
* design inclusive classrooms that challenge the persistence of gendered learning myths.

ECER 2016, Dublin

Research questions that I am exploring: How might we design social media and social networks to foster youth civic engagement and expression? How do we enable children and other minority voices to find their voice and make it heard around the world? How do we measures of the design, development, and feasibility of technology-enabled learning environments for children and youth in challenging contexts (e.g., urban slum areas, remote villages, aboriginal reserves, and socially or economically disadvantaged locations)?

EDCP 531: Cultural & New Media Studies

EDCP 531 is designed to help graduate students develop a framework for understanding cultural and new media studies. Cultural and new media technologies have intensified and transformed the way we communicate, the way we learn, and the way we teach. They have, we might say, transformed the student and transformed the teacher. But what is the nature of these changes?

Keeping Up with the Media

Keeping Up with the Media is an interactive, multi-touch eBook (available on iTunes).

This cutting-edge media study guide was created for teachers and students, by teachers. The authors are all practicing teachers completing a Master of Education in Digital Learning and Curriculum at the University of British Columbia. This elite team produced this guide to enhance media literacy and media education across the K-12 curriculum.

Makerspaces for Kids

It was exciting to be part of the Vancouver Mini Maker Faire 2016 Presentation Series @ the PNE Forum. I discussed the history, impact, and significance of the maker education movement and shared highlights from the makerspaces I’ve built with girls @ 101 Technology Fun (UBC campus).

The take-away message from my talk: all children deserve opportunities to be inventors, creators, and makers of the technologies that make our world, and thereby take part in changing who controls, owns, and shapes our future.

CSSE 2016, Calgary

Congrats to the HWL Research Team for an excellent symposium at CSSE 2016. I presented my research on The Tween Empowerment & Advocacy Methodology (TEAM).

My second talk was Designing a Makerspace with Youth: Ways, Means, Ends & Beginnings. Please feel welcome to ask me about the research I’m doing to empower children and youth worldwide through education in technology.

EDCP 508: Creativity & Learning in a New Tonality

Teaching is a gift! It was truly an honour and privilege to create this course and work alongside a team of talented, mindful, joyful, and innovative teachers.

EDCP 508 offers graduate students a space to create and a community to explore empirical and theoretical ideas about creativity in curriculum and pedagogical design.

UBC Centennial Maker Event

If there’s one event that you should visit during the centennial celebrations, this one promises to be stimulating, creatively inspiring, and ultimately a fascinating experience all around. The UBC Centennial Maker Faire offers a venue for UBC makers to showcase their projects, engage with others, and provide insight into the driving forces that make them tick. Creative credit to Bill Pickard for designing the eye-catching poster with the charming knitting robot!

MAKE, multi-touch eBook

MAKE is a collection of creative and intellectual works (artifacts, stories, poetry, photography, ethnodrama, and research) by a team of teachers engaged in the art of making meaning together.

We welcome you to join us in our journey: “to become a maker is to make the world for others, not only the material world but the world of ideas that rules over the material world, the dreams we dream and inhabit together” (Solnit, 2013).

International Women’s Day

Today marks 41 years since the UN began celebrating women’s achievements on March 8. Gender equity is at the heart of human rights. Excellent progress has been made, but we still have a long way to go to achieve gender parity in terms of economic opportunities, access to education and health care, and political influence/voice within households and society.

A diverse and inclusive workforce is important to drive innovation in our global community. At current rates of change, however, it will take another 118 years to close the global economic gap and attain gender justice.

ITEEA 2016, Washington

I’m in Washington, DC today for ITEEA 2016. I just gave a talk on a topic that is extremely important to me: collaborating to build a diverse STEM-literate society. I argued about the need to include youth voice and choice in defining new standards for technological literacy. I brought down the house!! Literally, the lights went off and for awhile I spoke in the dark… with the serendipity of a dramatic situation to captivate the focussed attention of my audience.

#CodedWithLove

Tween and teen girls are brining the world closer together with code. For example, 5 female teens made Spectrum, an app that provides a safe support system for the LGBT community. Harshita & Xyla created a wifi-enabled teddy bear that lets users send long distance hugs to their friends and loved ones. Many of the things you love are made with code. Love is using code to positively impact your community!