Episodes
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Episode 3 features an in-depth interview with Sara Hendren. Sara is an artist, design researcher, and write who teaches design for disability at Olin College of Engineering. Her work has been exhibited widely and is held in permanent collection of MoMA and the Cooper Hewitt museum; her writing and design work has been featured in The New York Times and Fast Company and on NPR. Hendren has been a fellow at New America and Carey Institute for Global Good. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and children https://sarahendren.com/about/.
In this episode, Sara discusses how to shift thinking, and teaching, around disability from assistive design to adaptive design. Her book asks the question: “What might assistance based on the body’s stunning capacity for adaptation — rather than a rigid insistence on ‘normalcy’ — look like?” In the classroom, Sara resists the approach of tech-savior-ism and rehab engineering, to instead reframe all technology as adaptive: “take a look at your smartphone, the utensils with which you ate your lunch, the glasses or the contacts that you wear every day, the orthotic shoe on one side that’s helping you with a more comfortable gait — and call that all technology, find yourself in that big plane of existence, which is just an extended body with stuff that has needs.”
The syllabus for the course “Investigating Normal” can be found here - http://aplusa.org/courses/investigating-normal/
The syllabus for the course “Critical Designer/Activist Engineer” can be found here - http://aplusa.org/courses/critical-designer-slash-activist-engineer/
Both courses are part of the Adaptation and Ability Group, a technical and social lab for creative engineering and design on the subjects of disability, which Sara directs. http://aplusa.org/
Read the interview as a transcript, with images and links, on our Medium Publication here - https://medium.com/processing-foundation/createcanvas-season-2-interview-with-sara-hendren-2b51a5adcc44 -
Episode 2 features an in-depth interview with Ari Melenciano, a Brooklyn-based artist, designer, creative technologist, researcher, and educator. In 2017, Ari founded Afrotectopia, a social institution fostering interdisciplinary innovation at the intersections of art, design, technology, Black culture, and activism through collaborative research and practice. She currently teaches creative technology and design at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, NYU’s Dept. of Digital Photography and Imaging, Pratt Institute’s Communications Design school, and Hunter College’s Integrated Media Arts MFA program.
In this episode, Ari speaks about her experience teaching everything from AP Computer Science, to kindergarten and middle school, to now at the university undergrad and graduate level. Growing up an artist, she explains her approach to art-making within a context of education and activism, as well as a way to move through life. She discusses Afrotectopia’s origins, and what she’s learned about community building and organizing over the years, as it has expanded to include a festival, fellowship program, summer camp, and, in January 2020, The School of Afrotectopia, a program that offered 10 free courses to over 250 students.
Ari's work is presented on her website - https://www.ariciano.com/. You can learn more about Afrotectopia here - https://www.afrotectopia.org/ and about the Imagineer Fellowship - https://medium.com/afrotectopia-imagineer-fellowship-2020/afrotectopia-imagineer-fellowship-2020-27a07a2a1ebb. The The syllabus from the Afrotectopia Imagineer Fellowship can be found here -
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yMrCSUtj_8Nh5jxXZegSYt1NtJ9NhVqssKxyA_Z8QIE/edit
Read the interview as a transcript, with images and links, on our Medium Publication - https://medium.com/processing-foundation/createcanvas-season-2-interview-with-ari-melenciano-f84972d9e1cb -
Missing episodes?
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In the first episode of season 2 of createCanvas, Saber Khan talks with Lauren Mccarthy about p5.js, teaching, and being a student and a teacher. Lauren is the creator of p5.js, an open-source art and education platform that prioritizes access and diversity in learning to code, with over 1.5 million users. She expands on this work in her role as a Director of the Processing Foundation, whose mission is to serve those who have historically not had access to the fields of technology, code, and art in learning software and visual literacy. Lauren is an Associate Professor at UCLA Design Media Arts.
Lauren's work is presented on her website - https://lauren-mccarthy.com/. You can take a look at the Kadenze Introduction to Programming for the Visual Arts with p5.js online course - https://www.kadenze.com/courses/introduction-to-programming-for-the-visual-arts-with-p5-js/info. And the Intro to p5.js workshop materials - https://github.com/lmccart/p5-workshop.
Read the interview as a transcript, with images and links, on our Medium Publication - (link coming soon) -
In episode 4, Kelly Lougheed talks with Saber Khan about middle-school and high-school computer-science education at all-girls’ schools. Kelly is a computer-science teacher in Los Angeles, CA, with experience teaching all levels of secondary CS, from Scratch to AP-level Java. Previously, she worked as a web developer and a Latin teacher. Teaching computer science has been the best of both worlds, as well as the subject of the Master's degree she is currently pursuing. A graduate of an all-girls’ middle and high school, she is particularly interested in girls’ computer-science education and the integration of computer science with art, math, and the humanities. This is the second part of our conversation with Kelly Lougheed. Here we talk about creative applications of coding in the classroom and professional development and pedagogy for educators teaching coding.
Kelly’s creative coding curriculum can be accessed on her Medium channel. Here are two beginner-friendly tutorials that use p5.js: Pong Game and Rainbow Paintbrush - https://medium.com/@kellylougheed
Read the interview as a transcript, with images and links, on our Medium Publication: here’s part 2 - https://medium.com/processing-foundation/createcanvas-interview-with-kelly-lougheed-part-2-966f59596372 -
In episode 4, Kelly Lougheed talks with Saber Khan about middle-school and high-school computer-science education at all-girls’ schools. Kelly Lougheed is a computer-science teacher in Los Angeles, CA, with experience teaching all levels of secondary CS, from Scratch to AP-level Java. Previously, she worked as a web developer and a Latin teacher. Teaching computer science has been the best of both worlds, as well as the subject of the Master's degree she is currently pursuing. A graduate of an all-girls’ middle and high school, she is particularly interested in girls’ computer-science education and the integration of computer science with art, math, and the humanities.
Kelly’s creative coding curriculum can be accessed on her Medium channel. Here are two beginner-friendly tutorials that use p5.js: Pong Game and Rainbow Paintbrush - https://medium.com/@kellylougheed
Read the interview as a transcript, with images and links, on our Medium Publication: here’s part 1 - https://medium.com/processing-foundation/createcanvas-interview-with-kelly-lougheed-part-1-ea2ee45abbf0 -
In episode 3, Aankit Patel (aankit.com) talks with Saber Khan about his previous role as Senior Director of Computer Science Academics at NYC Department of Education. Over the past five years, Aankit has worked as a leader of the Computer Science for All movement at the NYC Department of Education, which aims to bring computer science education to all students in all schools by 2025. In part 2 of his interview with Saber Khan, Aankit speaks about the different scales of impact that open source software can have on education, as well as how to engage teachers in creating not only curriculum but a sense of community and agency for themselves.
