Superintendent: IJIMS Strengthened Learning and Professional Development in New Jersey School District

In June, 2009, my colleague Ursula Wolz and I had a chat with outgoing Ewing New Jersey Public Schools Superintendent Raymond Broach about his views on the IJIMS Project. IJIMS or the Interactive Journalism Institute for Middle Schoolers, is collaboration between Ewing township’s middle school and The College of New Jersey that is supported by the National Science Foundation’s Broadening Participation in Computing Project.  Wolz is the Project’s principal investigator; I am a co-PI along with Monisha Pulimood. The other TCNJ members of our team are gender equity specialist Mary Switzer, several TCNJ student research assistants, and a select group of volunteer mentors. Meredith Stone is our external evaluator.

Our hypothesis was that students who don’t think of themselves as “computing types”  can be successfully introduced to computing and programming concepts by learning to do multimedia journalism about their own communities. Our research results more than validate our hypothesis.

In this interview, Dr. Broach lauded the constructivist nature of the IJIMS model – a method of teaching the emphasizes collaboration and discovery, making students participants in creating knowledge, not merely absorbing knowledge. Broach noted that the Fisher teachers and guidance counselor who collaborated with us also received training in multimedia journalism and programming in Scratch. This, he said was a departure from the usual professional development model, because it required the teachers to learn skills that weren’t necessarily part of their training.

By the way, one of the Fisher teachers, Laura Fay, recently presented her experience teaching the Scratch programming language in the 8th grade language arts classroom at a meeting for investigators in the BPC program. You can read the notes from the presentation she and Ursula Wolz gave on the IJIMS project:

Bertin M. Louis: Some Haitian Protestants Agree With Pat Robertson

“Haiti, Now and Next:

“On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince, Leogane, and other parts of Haiti. The day after this catastrophe, Reverend Pat Robertson, the host of the 700 Club and an influential voice in the American fundamentalist movement, remarked that centuries ago Haitians swore a pact to the Devil in order to gain their freedom from slavery under the French. The moment to which Robertson referred in his comments was the Bwa Kayiman Vodou ceremony that launched the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). Despite the humanitarian efforts of his charitable organization currently assisting Haitians with earthquake relief, Robertson’s remarks strike many as callous and racist. But missing in some of the responses to those remarks in the midst of this unimaginable tragedy, which include condemnations and historical essays, is an important reality of the contemporary Haitian religious landscape which has been neglected thus far and bears analysis: some Haitians (Haitian Protestants, in particular) also believe that Haiti is cursed…”

Read the whole thing

L’Heureux “Dumi” Lewis: Black Male Privilege

Dr. R. L’Heureux Lewis is an assistant professor of sociology at City College of New York. His professional website is at ProfessorLewis.com and he also maintains the blog UptownNotes.com. This talk was one of the presentations from the Morehouse College Founders Day Symposium.