Kafai’s team helps students who code tell their own stories

The popular narrative about kids who code often leaves people out, including girls, students of color, and students living in cities.

For this year’s Computer Science for Philly Week, Penn GSE’s Yasmin Kafai and her team designed CodeQuilt Philadelphia, a collaborative activity that allows students to take ownership of their own stories about coding.

The project lets students and teachers design digital quilt patches. When the quilt is finished, Kafai hopes it will tell a more true story about who can code, and why they do it. 

CodeQuilt introduces students to basic programming concepts on Scratch. Students will be provided with a template on Scratch with basic building blocks that can be remixed, and at the end, they will share their projects in the Scratch Studio. A teacher guide is provided. 

Students can create their CodeQuilt  patches here as part of CS4Philly Week through December 13.

And you can follow the quilt's progress here.