TASCasaurus is a pilot project for engaging kids in fourth to eighth grades to re-mix websites and research STEM content. It was implemented in six New York City after-school programs in 2011 and was a partnership between Hive NYC, The After School Corporation (TASC) and MOUSE. The project was inspired by the Hackasaurus curriculum and web-making workshops piloted by Hive NYC and MOUSE in 2009. In this instance, after-school coordinators were trained to use the free, open-source tool X-Ray Goggles through professional development. The coordinators then lead a series of workshops for youth, applying their disciplinary knowledge to their new skill set. In these workshops, students were given a brief introduction to HTML and CSS in relation to a final STEM challenge that varied from school to school.
The three main goals of TASCasaurus were to:
1. Use technology to engage 200 underrepresented youth from 10 schools in a project that will increase both their digital literacy and their interest in STEM.
2. Prepare and motivate community educators to deliver technology-enabled, student-driven learning activities.
3. Establish a turnkey model that can be quickly disseminated among established after-school networks..
A curriculum was developed and shared publicly. It enabled participants to understand that:
- “Hacking” has always been a key element in the creative process. It is a constructive, collaborative activity, not a destructive one.
- What the code behind a website looks like; how they can change the site using the X-Ray Goggles; and how a website changes when its code is altered.
- The Web is made out of building blocks that they can rearrange to create new things through an iterative process.
- HTML is a language used to tell computers how to build webpages so that humans can consume them
- CSS means cascading style sheets
- Parts of a webpage include HTML, CSS, graphic assets and text content that an element is the combination of an opening and closing tag and the content in between
- Biodiversity is the variety of life on our planet and why it’s important to humans
and enables learners to :
- Use the browser to remix content found on the web.
- Tweak or enter a URL
- Switch between browser tabs
- Use keyboard shortcuts (i.e. for copying and pasting)
- Right-click and scroll with the mouse
- Use the Goggles to replace both text and images on a site
- Share a hacked page with peers
- Use a search engine to find specific content
- Find the content he/she was looking for
- Revisit hackasaurus.org or the MDN for resources
- Create text on a webpage using basic HTML tags
- Recognize HTML and CSS
- Install the X-Ray Goggles
- Upload a picture or drawing for insertion in a website
use direct observations and online research to create a website
Curriculum is below:
This project was funded by the Hive Digital Media Learning Fund in 2012.