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[blak di-ge-ra-ti]

Definition // A black American
of African descent who is skilled
with or knowledgeable or well
versed about digital technologies,
computers and the Internet //

 

 

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Tuesday
14Jul

Dr. Jane Margolis interviewed by Computerworld about diversity in Technology

UCLA Senior researcher and Black Digerati supporter Dr. Jane Margolis was recently interviewed by Computerworld's Joyce Carpenter about the results of her research into computer science education and diversity in the computing field. Below is an excerpt of the interview courtesy of Computerworld.com:

CW: Your most recent book, Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing, is based on research at three schools in Los Angeles. How did demographics affect access to quality computer science education at the high school level?

JM: One school was a predominately Latino School, overcrowded. Most of the students were on free and reduced [cost] lunch. Another school was predominatately African-American, a middle-and working-class school. The third was in a white, very wealthy section of Los Angeles. It had one-third students from the neighborhood and two-thirds students of color who traveled from around the city. All three were "digital high schools", which was a state initiative to get technology into the schools and get the schools wired up to the Internet in the late '90s.

The school with the high concentration of students of color had the most rudimentary of computer science instruction -- word processing, cut-and-paste assignments. AP Computer Science, as a regular course, was only at the school with the higher number of white students. [The course] had very few students of color in it. It was mostly white male students.

CW: "Stuck in the shallow end" - can you explain that pool metaphor?

JM: I read an article that talked about African-American kids drowning three times more than while children. I learned that 60% of African-American kids do not know who to swim. It turns out that there's a legacy of denied access to swimming opportunities that goes way back to Jim Crow, when access to swimming pools, beaches [and] lakefront was very contested. As in every case of segregation, there are belief systems that arise to justify the segregation. There were these absurd notions that blacks were not swimming because they were less buoyant. Those notions masked the history of denied access.

The  more I learned about swimming and the denied access to swimming, and the results of people not knowing how to swim, I saw this metaphor for what was happening in compter science.

Click here to read the rest of the interview.

Wednesday
08Jul

IU School of Informatics Senior Ginger White Awarded ThemeVision Scholorship

Indiana University School of Informatics Senior Ginger White was recently awarded the inaugural ThemeVision Scholarship, which is an award given to an outstanding minority student in the schools Media Arts & Science program. Ms. White currently maintains a 3.94 GPA and upon completing her bachelors has opted to stay at the Indiana University School of Informatics and complete her masters in Human Computer Interaction.

This inaugural ThemeVision Scholarship is only the beginning for ThemeVision LLC. They plan on providing more scholarships in the years to come to support students of color because they realize African-American women and other minorities, have historically been underrepresented in computer science, graphic design, and digital media.

Sunday
05Jul

Black Digerati Quote 

The minorities---Hispanics, African American kids, they're not really interested in it [computer science]. But I think that's only because they haven't been really shown how to work with computers. So, therefore, their interest lies elsewhere. But I noticed that a lof of the Caucasian students, they're into technology, and a lot of the Asian  students [too].. But I think that if they [African American and Hispanics] knew that they had more access to it, then they would do it, you know?

Source: Stuck in the Shallow End - Los Angeles public high school student Jontille

Saturday
04Jul

Fourteen African American Ph.D. Researchers in Computer Science

During Black History month 2009 Portland State University computer science professor Bryant York profiled 14 African-American males who are doing advanced research in computer science. These brothers are doing extraordinary research in everything from Network Security to Visual Data Mining. The 14 combined have over $32 million in research grant funding. I had the pleasure of hearing one of the brothers profiled by the name of Dr. Brian Blake at Georgetown University speak a few months ago at the Tapia Computing Conference in Portland, OR during the Google session. He provided some excellent insight into resume/CV writing.

Also, a seperate document about African American women researchers in Computer Science is being developed by a colleague of Dr. Bryant York. We will keep you posted on its development.

Click here to view the pdf of the write up.

 

Saturday
04Jul

The Spelman Spelbots Tie for First Place at 2009 RoboCup Japan

The SpelBot robotics team at Spelman College recently tied for first place at the 2009 RoboCup in Japan. RoboCub is the largest event of research in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence in the world. This talented group of ladies are led and coached by Spelman Computer Science professor Dr. Andrew Williams. Dr. Williams is the first African-American to earn a PhD in engineering from the University of Kansas. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Williams a few months ago at the Tapia Conference in Portland, OR. I mentioned to him the work we're doing at Black Digerati and he was like, 'oh yea I know about the Black Digerati site!' He lives by the motto that you can do anything, which is what he instills into his students at Spelman encouraging them to pursue the field of computer science and robotics. That level of encourage is what underrepresented minorities in Science and Technology need in order for us to succeed. Also, the ongoing success of the Spelman robotics team dispels the myth that women and minorities (specifically African-American men and women) either aren't interested in Computer Science or that we lack the mental capacity to perform Computer Science research.