Creative Coding: Programming for Personal Expression

In this episode I unpack Peppler and Kafai’s (2009) publication titled “Creative coding: Programming for personal expression,” which is an analysis of a single project created in Scratch that appears to indicate kids can learn how to create media arts expressions despite little experience with coding.

Welcome everyone to the CSK8 podcast my
name is Jared O'Leary and today I'm
going to be unpacking some scholarship
the article that I'm going to be
unpacking is titled creative coding
programming for personal expression and
it is written by Kiley pepper and Yasmin
calf I apologies if I ever mispronounce
any names alright so if you look at
these show notes on my website you will
actually find me citation for this
particular article where you can click
on the title and it will take you to a
PDF of the article and then if you click
on either of the author last names it
will take you to the Google Scholar
profile so you can actually read more of
their materials alright so you might be
wondering what is this article about let
me read for you the abstract media arts
within primary and secondary education
is a relatively new avenue of research
within the context of the arts classroom
rarely is learning to program emphasize
despite its importance for creative
expression in a digital medium we
present outcomes from an extensive field
study at a digital studio where the
youth access programming environments
emphasizing graphic music and video
learning the language of creative coding
is essential to expression in a digital
medium one with increasing importance
for youth and society at art here we
argue that it's not just in the viewing
or playing of digital media but also in
the constructive or coding experience
through which connections to art and be
established end quote
now this was written in 2009 so it's
been a while and since then a lot of
people who have talked about creative
coding I've also just kind of broadened
it into creative computing so whenever I
mentioned creative coding from this
article you can think broader towards CS
by thinking of creative computing if I
were to kind of distill this entire
paper down into a one sentence summary I
would describe it as an analysis of a
single project created in scratch which
appears to indicates kids can learn how
to create media arts expressions despite
little experience with coding all right
so let's dive into the article itself so
pepper and cough I begin by pointing out
that at the time of their publication
there has been little recognition for a
need to program in schools especially in
the arts where professionals often use
quote advanced programming
to manipulate and create digital
expressions and quote that was in PDF
page one so what they're kind of talking
about there is that a lot of media
artists are using programming to create
like animations and stuff so you may
have seen some of the like behind the
scenes Pixar videos and whatnot or like
keynotes where they talk about how they
used a ton of programming to do the
lighting effects or to randomly generate
environments and things like that or
like to get the grass to move
so in those media arts creations there's
a lot of program programming involved
and so that's kind of what the authors
are talking about here is that those
kind of advanced programming is combined
CS concepts with visual art concepts or
media arts concepts now the authors
indicate that previous forms of media
arts engagement tend to focus on visual
media through static or video images so
think of like creating something in like
Photoshop or in a move of movie editing
software however pepper and calf I
actually suggest media arts engagement
can include coding as well now when CS
is integrated into a traditional
classroom
Hepler and cough I actually suggests
that the focus in 2009 tends to revolve
around integration with math and science
however the approach they forward quote
situates programming within a more media
rich context focusing less on the
manipulation and interaction with
numeric symbols but more on digital
media end quote
and that is also on PF page one so what
they're suggesting in this particular
article is that rather than learning how
to program through numeric symbols and
things like that kids can actually learn
how to program by using digital media
now back in 2009 when this was written
that was kind of a very novel thing for
the most part just because there wasn't
a lot of graphical user interfaces that
are at least not as many as there are
today so what they're suggesting is that
kids can learn how to program by
manipulating sprites and programming
each one of them individually to do
something like create a game or a story
or a dance or an animation or whatever
rather than just focusing on
manipulating variables or numbers in the
intro pepper and cough I point towards
research that they might describe as
creative coding within domains such as
video game design computational craft
and robotics and within animation and
computer graphics if you're interested
in reading more about those they do
like some interesting sounding studies
and you can read those citations in the
paper itself by going to the show notes
they kind of round out their
introduction by saying that by using
scratch kids can actually learn how to
program through media arts by creating
video games art objects animated stories
etc okay so you might be wondering well
how is the study design what exactly is
going on here so what they did is they
kind of took some ethnographic field
notes and collected over 300 design
projects over the course of a year now
the participants that were in the space
that they were at in Los Angeles at a
media art studio were ranging from ages
work as individuals or in small groups
on a variety of media arts projects us
one of the project types that the could
work on is programming media arts
through scratch now this particular
paper highlights one participant within
this space so here's a quote on the
participant a 13 year old
african-american artists called Kayleigh
although she has over four years of
experience at the studio this is her
first project using scratch as an
expressive medium in quote that was on
page three PDF page three so Kaylee's
project is a dance project that she
created it over a three-week period and
she spent between six and seven hours
working on it
now it's important to note that she
didn't have a lot of experience before
going into this with programming okay so
what were their main findings in the
studies so there were two main
categories of findings that they had one
was personal connections and then the
other was epistemological connections
and expressions which is a mouthful
alright so let's talk about the personal
connections first so Kayleigh made
personal connections with the projects
by creating a dance project based around
a Gwen Stefani song holla back girl she
also made connections by inserting
pictures of herself and her brother in
the project although this might be
considered a personal connection as it
is she repeatedly made comments about
whether her appearance match the style
of a music video so her goal with this
project was to create some kind of a
music video and she wanted to be in that
but she didn't just want to have a
picture of herself she wanted to like
look like she was in the music videos so
it was really important for her that her
appearance was appropriate in
fit within the music video now on the
epistemological connections and
expressions here's a quote that they
have on page 4 look we find that there
was an iterative cycle starting with a
design oriented goal ie how the
character should look and dance and
achieved by utilizing complex command
structures in quote
okay so Cayley tended to group sprite
behavior together by type and gave each
group distinct motions to create a music
video so if there are a bunch of dancer
sprites the dancers will all move in
different ways if there were some like
um lighting effects those would kind of
all have different code that were
similar to each other etc now one of the
important things that they mention in
this particular section and this is on
page four is quote without any prior
programming experience Cayley was using
looping constructs repurposing scripts
and moreover coding creatively in quote
so that has a very important finding so
some of the educators that I've talked
to in NCS have mentioned that they're
afraid of getting into the creative
computing side of things because they
feel like they need to like lecture on
it first but I need to talk about
sequence and then I'm gonna talk about
how to loop those sequences and then I'm
gonna talk about event handling or
variables or whatever so they assume
that then you need to have a structured
environment for what you're gonna do but
in this particular study and they
mentioned that Kaylee didn't have a lot
of experience but she actually uncovered
a lot of computer science concepts or
practices by just creating something in
this case a music video to hollaback
girl on page 5 in the discussion the
authors actually mentioned the following
quote learning to creatively code does
not necessarily involve an extensive and
time-consuming introduction in quote
having had experience with all grades K
through 8 in coding in makerspace style
classes and then all grades K through
graduate and other subject areas I agree
with this like in my experience it
didn't take a lot of time or
front-loading to get kids to create
especially in a platform like scratch
which has a lot of tutorials and like
little mini guides that can kind of like
just provide a small snippet of
information to get going and then kids
are able to kind of run with it because
of the experience designed into the
platform itself ie the things are
grouped in terms of like oh if I want to
make something move I should probably
click on them
Oshin tab etc so it's a relatively
intuitive albeit fairly complex platform
that kids can use and not only can they
use it but they can use it with little
upfront teaching or direct instruction
now in their conclusion they end with
the following two sentences this is also
on page five
so quote the potential of getting youth
interested in technology has not been
realized in computer science nor in arts
classes representing a missed
opportunity for arts education
especially since many involved in
changing in the absence of women and
minorities in information technologies
have argued for alternative approaches
in computer classes to broaden
participation given this need to become
fluent in both the arts and information
technologies and makes sense to offer
interdisciplinary experiences for young
children similar to those presented by
scratch include so what's interesting is
like this issue was being raised in 2009
but it's still an issue that we're
talking about in computer science
education today we're still talking
about how to get underrepresented groups
and minorities to participate in classes
now having experience working out of
nonprofits I can say that like going for
district-wide implementation is one way
to try and get everybody involved with
coding however just doing that alone is
not going to be enough because you need
to also encourage kids to understand
that they have a potential future that
with this whether it be in a corporate
route or even in a leisure route so an
example of a corporate route would be
like hey by the end of 12th grade if you
really work hard at this you'll be able
to program and you could potentially get
a job right out of high school without
even having to get a degree although a
degree might help now a leisurely
example is I actually proposed my wife
by modding the game Minecraft so I went
into the game's code and I took the wolf
and made a variation of that for each of
our dogs so that all four of our dogs
were in the game because of the code
that I used for it and some of the
visual mods that I made etc so like that
was one way that I used code in my
leisure but another example of how I did
it is I HAP's for myself and for my
friends that we would use to play Magic
the Gathering because we're nerds
alright so that's kind of like a general
summary of some of the
findings that I found relevant and then
some side commentary here and there with
what was going on at the end of each one
of the podcasts where I unpack
scholarship I want to kind of talk about
some of my lingering questions or
thoughts one of my lingering thoughts
was that not only could this provide
opportunities for arts educators to
explore coding and CS but also for CS
educators to explore the arts so
whenever people are engaging in any kind
of interdisciplinary collaborations or
explorations I really like for both
sides to think through how could each
discipline learn from the other rather
than kind of positioning one discipline
in a subservient relationship to the
other which i think is kind of
problematic now I'm not saying that the
author's did that I'm just saying that
like whenever I read this
interdisciplinary stuff I really want
people to think through how both or all
of discipline via disciplines involved
can benefit from these kinds of
explorations now one of the questions
that I have for this particular study is
when does or doesn't the creation of a
product or expression demonstrate
understanding so what does that mean so
when they were talking about this
product the music video that Kaley
created they were analyzing the code
itself and they kind of provided some
examples of like Kaley was really
excited when this happened or Katy was
frustrated when Katy not Katie Kaley was
frustrated when XYZ happened but they
didn't really talk about what Kaley was
learning at those moments they only
talked about epistemology zoar things
like that at the end with in relation to
the product itself so a follow-up
question that I have is how much of a
creative expression is the result of
understanding and how much of it is the
result of experimentation and happy
accidents
in other words just because there's a
bunch of sequences and loops that are
going on in there it could have just
come about by kids dragging and dropping
a bunch of blocks in a sequence and
going oh that looks cool but not
actually knowing what's going on in that
particular sequence and I say that as
having seen kids do that when
I would kind of just like be walking
around monitoring the class and just
checking in formatively to see how kids
are doing I'd see like a really
interesting set of code and then when I
dive deeper by asking questions like oh
so what do you think this is gonna do or
how does this work sometimes they would
just confess like I don't know I just
kind of dragged random stuff and this is
what I got I think it looks cool and
while I agreed with them I don't think
that kind of an instance demonstrate an
understanding as much as it just was a
happy accident that resulted in a
project that kids were happy with so
another question that I have is so what
are some approaches that can be taken
along the way to focus on understanding
throughout a process rather than
assessment of the product itself so
whenever you're in the classroom what
I'd really recommend doing is try and do
as much formative assessments as you can
throughout the process where you're just
constantly asking questions and trying
to get kids to think deeper or share
their understandings this could be
one-on-one or it could be even in the
form of like goals at the start of the
week so I saw kids in three three week
in my classes where I'd see them every
day of the week except for Wednesdays
and on Mondays what we do is we'd set a
goal for the week and they'd fill it out
on a form that was submitted
electronically and then throughout the
week I'd keep when I walked by I'd ask
them how are you doing on your goal how
how is what you're working on right now
relate to the goal that you submit to me
etc and so while I was doing that I was
trying to get them to really understand
the processes that they were doing
rather than just creating something
random or just experimenting on their
own and again there's nothing wrong with
like experimentation or whatnot I happen
to love it I've learned a lot from it
but when experimenting and it creates
some kind of result I really want kids
to kind of like try and figure out how
did this series or a sequence or
algorithm rate that happy accident than
I'm going for right so this was just
kind of so my general thoughts or
questions after having read this study
and kind of a summary of the study
itself again you can finally show notes
to read the entire paper and see a bunch
of the other publications by both of the
authors just by clicking on the names in
the show know
on my website speaking of you can check
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Article

Peppler, K., & Kafai, Y. (2009). Creative coding: Programming for personal expression. Published in the proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), Rhodes, Greece.

Abstract

“Media Arts within primary and secondary education is a relatively new avenue of research. Within the context of the arts classroom, rarely is learning to program emphasized despite its importance for creative expression in a digital medium. We present outcomes from an extensive field study at a digital studio where youth accessed programming environments emphasizing graphic, music and video. Learning the language of creative coding is essential to expression in a digital medium — one with increasing importance for youth and society at large. Here, we argue that it’s not just in the viewing or playing of digital media but also in the constructive — or coding — experience through which connections to art can be established.”

Author Keywords

Art, design, digital art, education, education design, and media art.

My One Sentence Summary

An analysis of a single project created in Scratch appears to indicate kids can learn how to create media arts expressions despite little experience with coding.

Some of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts

Not only might coding providing opportunities for arts educators to explore coding and CS, but CS educators to explore the arts.
When does/n't the creation of a product or expression demonstrate understanding?
- How much of a creative expression is the result of understanding and how much of it is the result of experimentation and happy accidents?
- What are some approaches that can be taken along the way to focus on understanding throughout a process rather than assessment of the product itself?