Acknowledging all Potential Challenges

I used today as an opportunity to clearly define the challenges of my project. Identifying the challenges and figuring out the possible solutions to overcome them would help me clearly plan my teaching sessions in a way that creates an atmosphere of mutual understanding and effective communication.

Challenge #1 - Language Barrier: The children understand very little English, and some understand a bit of Hindi. All are most comfortable with Telugu.

Solution: Although I could overcome the language barrier challenge by trying to select the schools where the children understand at least some Hindi, I, however, know that I cannot and should not totally rely on that and be prepared and work on my Telugu to ensure the full involvement of the children. The best approach for this challenge is to create an instructions document which contains the translation of the original English instructions into both Hindi and Telugu. I will need to do this for each game that I use in my teaching. Having this will help me prepare ahead of time and get me comfortable with the language at least from the instructional point.

Apart from the instructions document, I will also create a terminology document (for the blocks used to write the code). The terminology document will contain all the blocks in each game, translated into Telugu and Hindi. This document can be referred to in the sessions before beginning the coding so that the children get familiarized with the blocks and their corresponding meaning in Telugu and Hindi. This way, when they are referred to later in the game, the children will be able to use the blocks to create the code both independently and efficiently, although the blocks may be written in English. For instance, the block “move left” would be referred to as “Edemu Vaipu Pampinchandi” (Telugu) or “Baaen Jaae” (Hindi).

Both the instructions document and the terminology document would be critical in overcoming the language barrier.

Challenge #2 - Cultural Barrier: The children possibly lack the cultural context needed in the games. Although the characters, being from movies, will secure a bond with the children, the strength of the bond is not fully realized as the children have most likely not watched these movies. For instance, they would probably not know characters in the games such as Moana or R2D2 or BB8, as most of them probably are not exposed to such western contexts.

Solution: I will create a character document for each game. This document will contain pictorial representations of the characters along with their names for each game. This will help the children easily attribute a name to each character and give them a good idea of what to expect ahead of time. This would act as a bridge for the cultural gap by ensuring the children understand the game instructions (to create the code) when the character’s names are mentioned; when otherwise, without the cultural gap, the characters would need no such introduction.

Challenge #3 - Time Constraint: A good adherence to the time constraint and wrapping up the Hour of Code® session in a timely manner given the above challenges.

Solution: Planning the sessions ahead of time and creating a session plan would help me manage my time. The session plan will help me organize all my resources and break down the teaching into multiple stages with a tentative allocated time for each. This will help me keep track of my time.

When I was exploring the Code.org® games, I came across the lesson plan template that was recommended for planning the sessions. However, I would be able to use this template only as a guideline as I had to consider the language and cultural barriers. I decided to create my own Session Plan which will be built on this recommended template, and add my own specifics to address the challenges I have to deal with.

Apart from the above mentioned supporting documents, creating a solutions document for each game would also be a handy resource. Just like the recommended lesson plan template, some of the games in Code.org® have some solutions, but they are not present for all the games. In addition, some of them do not have the solutions in the Blockly script (for instance, in Star Wars, the solutions are given in Java and not in Blockly). So, the solutions document is yet another supporting document that I will create for each game.

By going over the solutions for each game ahead of time, I will be well prepared and hence be able to address the time-management concern.

Challenge #4 - Computer Proficiency barrier: The importance of the children having adequate computer skills to perform drag and drop, and right and left click is very critical for the success of this project.

The best way to deal with this challenge is to group the children such that those with lesser computer-use proficiency share computers with children with higher computer-use proficiency. Since, there is no way that I will be able to evaluate the mouse and drag and drop proficiency of the children ahead of time, I decided that after the first 5-10 minutes of the session, if I observe that a particular group is lagging behind very much then I will regroup them so that at least one child has good drag and drop and mouse skills in every group.

Challenge #5 - Computers and Internet availability barrier: Availability of adequate computers and working Internet connection in the school is a big prerequisite for the teaching

The only way to deal with this challenge is to personally inspect the conditions of the machines and internet a day before the session to ensure that everything is working fine.