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April 19: Computer science field trip covered by Daily Bruin

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  • 04-19-2010
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"I came to this concerned about educational equity and about equal access to knowledge. Computer science is one of those fields in which there is so much inequity in access," said Jane Margolis.

District students explore campus

UCLA,LAUSD promote high schoolers' access to computer science

 

by Andra Lim

Bruin contributor

alim@media.ucla.edu

 

Until this semester, high school junior Sharon Friedman used her computer to do homework and socialize with friends.

But when she started taking Exploring Computer Science, a class created by UCLA in partnership with the Los Angeles Unified School District, she began to see that computers are more than just a portal to the Internet.

“I never realized you could make games using a computer,” the Hollywood High School student said, adding that she created her own version of Pacman during one unit of the course.

From 2000 to 2004, a UCLA research team investigated why so few females, blacks and Latinos were learning computer science at the high school level.

Out of this research, a team of UCLA-based experts in education and computer science worked with LAUSD, one of the most diverse districts in the country, to build the course Exploring Computer Science.

“I came to this concerned about educational equity and about equal access to knowledge. Computer science is one of those fields in which there is so much inequity in access,” said Jane Margolis, a co-leader of the project and senior researcher at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

 

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