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Who is Zora Ball?
While you may not recognize the first grader’s name now, chances are
you will be hearing it again, as she is currently the youngest person to
have created a mobile game app. While computer programming is perhaps
not a typical school activity for an average 7 year old, it is for
students at Zora’s charter school. Zora created the mobile app while
taking part in an initiative by the Foundation for the Advancement of
Technology and Education (FATE).
According to their website FATE
is a “non-profit corporation whose mission is to promote the skilled
and intelligent use of education technology by educators and learners
through targeted demonstration, funding and community networking in the
Greater Philadelphia area.”
Through a program called Bootstrap,
Zora was able to design her video game. Bootstrap teaches students how
to program their own videogames using algebraic and geometric concepts.
While they don’t use actual computer programming language, they
instead use actual math to design simple games.
Perhaps not surprisingly, mobile video game app creation is not all
just fun and games. Students build the games using algebra and geometry,
thereby making it easier to apply those concepts learned building the
games, to broader mathematical problems. Many computer programming
languages use concept that are actually incompatible with algebra, which
could make it difficult for students to use what they learn in
programming in math class. Bootstrap is engineered so that functions
and variables behave as they do in mathematics, rather than as they do
in classical computer programming, so that mathematical reasoning is
reinforced.
Over time, FATE plans to continue to work with Bootstrap in order to
train more teachers and collect more research. It looks as though we
can look forward to more apps created by kids, as this is just the
beginning of integrating technology and education.
