Webinar Series
Engaging with Social and Political Themes in Computer / Data Science Education
Date+Time
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The MƒA Equity Webinars Series invites nationally recognized educators to share ideas that support equity within STEM. Following an interactive presentation by the speaker, Master Teachers have the opportunity to discuss how these ideas might be applied in their own school environments in small groups. Teachers from MƒA, other Master Teacher programs, and people interested in learning more about MƒA are invited to attend.
Educators are regularly called upon to help students make sense of their technologically mediated worlds. This involves helping students to “think computationally,” write code, and/or gather and analyze data. This also (increasingly) involves helping them consider the broader social and political impacts of these technologies and methods. In this talk, Dr. Sarah Van Wart will describe a few different approaches that she has taken – citizen science, civic advocacy, and app prototyping – to help young people engage with problems that are at the same time technical, social, and political. Dr. Van Wart will also share resources that have been helpful as she has tried to figure out how to balance these themes in her own teaching practice.
Dr. Sarah Van Wart is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Computer Science at Northwestern University. She develops and teaches courses in human-computer interaction, web design/development, introductory programming, and computing/data ethics. She also co-directs the TREE Lab with Dr. Sepehr Vakil, where she designs and studies tools, activities, and other supports to help broad audiences (community groups, young people, etc.) learn about data, computing, and their broader impacts. Van Wart received her Ph.D. in Information Science from the UC Berkeley School of Information, where she studied the role of data and computing in supporting civic participation and advocacy among high school students. Prior to joining academia, she worked as a software designer/developer, building data and communication systems to support public accountability for city and regional development projects.