Discovering the Language Barrier

Today, I went through some Hour of Code® activities to get a feel of what it entails. I tried the Star Wars, Flappy and Angry Bird games (from various age categories). I was comforted, no doubt that the Hour of Code® was the resource for my teaching. The consistency in the games in the form of the flow in which the fundamentals were briefly touched upon was truly amazing. In the Star Wars game, for instance, the fundamentals addressed at the beginning were only simple algorithms with keyboard (arrow) to character movement (the arrows make the character move). But then, the game smoothly transitions accommodating more complicated events involving ‘ When Touched ’, and more complicated commands such as ‘ Add Character .’

I decided to record the level of difficulty and the types of blocks (e.g. use of movements, conditionals or loops) included in the games and began shortlisting the games that I would encourage the children to try out. For this purpose, I decided to create a table noting the shortlisted games and the programing concepts they covered.

During the investigation, I noticed that some of the games had videos that explained important functionalities such as loops (repeat), conditionals (if statements, if-else statements), which would be necessary in explaining the concept and functionality of the specific slightly complex blocks. This is when I realized that there was one issue that I could not believe I had not thought of before, which was that the children might not be able to understand the western English. I was very anxious now, and decided that I would confirm my worry with Mr. Shravan in our next meeting. Fortunately, I had scheduled another meeting with him today itself, to get inputs on the schools I would be visiting and also to share my progress in the Personal Project, especially focusing on updating him on code.org® and the Hour of Code® activity. It was important to get his OK and make sure that he has a good idea of how I am progressing with my Project.

While investigating, I also came across a handy feature of the code.org® games, that upon completion, there was a certificate provided in the form of a softcopy. Handing out a certificate to every child who completes the Hour of Code® seemed like a very good idea. This way, they would remain encouraged and motivated to learn beyond the Hour of Code® and try more activities on their own.

Once I felt I had completed a thorough investigation, I set off to meet with Mr. Shravan. I briefed him on Code.org® and gave him a demo of one of the Hour of Code® activities. He was very excited and instantly okayed the approach.

He told me that he was very much interested in the training workshop for the ILP staff and he was looking forward to them understanding Code.org® in general. This was really great news for me, as it was a validation that Mr. Shravan saw my work as valuable enough to be passed on to the staff and also gave me an opportunity to make my project sustainable beyond the scope of just being a personal project. Training the ILP staff would magnify the impact of the work and ensure that it is carried forward as a regular activity in the schools rather than just a 2 hour workshop of code. I was absolutely delighted and even more resolved to work harder for my Project.

He also updated me on the possible government schools I could go to. Based on proximity of the schools and the availability of computers at the schools, I decided to go ahead with Nallagandla Primary School and Kokapet Upper Primary School. I recorded the dynamics of the school as follows so that I could plan my sessions better.

During the discussion, I brought up my worry of showing the videos and if the children would understand that level of English. To this, Mr. Shravan confirmed that the children especially belonged to the underprivileged background and hence were most comfortable in their local language Telugu. Almost all understood very little English and some understood Hindi. I realized that I had completely taken the language of instruction for granted and this was a big setback for me as I do not know Telugu and am most conversant with English and reasonably comfortable with Hindi. I got a little flustered and in my mind started figuring out how I could make this project successful when I would not even be able to communicate in the language that the children understood. I noted down this point, and decided to begin working on this immediately to make sure that I figure out a way to handle this big complication.

Nonetheless, I was very happy with how the meeting had turned out and I came back home with a clear mind on what to do: working on the language barrier.