Building communities on the grid---New voices and new visions for engaging Native American students in computer science

Abstract

New Voices and New Visions for Engaging Native Americans in Computer Science is a collaborative project between Boston University and University of New Mexico, funded through NSF's Broadening Participation in Computing program. This project combines Native American culture and art with a high-technology, computer-rich environment as a vehicle to engage Native American students in computer and computational science. The project employs the Access Grid (AG), virtual reality technologies and Boston University's stereoscopic Deep Vision Display Wall (DVD Wall) to create a culturally and technologically compelling educational experience.The curriculum will expose both college and high school students to the power and depth of computer science, hopefully inspiring many of them to obtain a degree in this discipline. We anticipate that this pilot project will provide a model based on an interdisciplinary framework which can be emulated by other institutions and adapted for other groups underrepresented in computer and computational sciences.