Learning and Collaboration across Generations in a Community

Abstract

We report on the activities and outcomes of two workshops in which middle school students and senior citizens explored, designed, and constructed visual simulations related to community issues. The workshops are part of a larger project, in which we are studying the effects of community-related programming projects and discussion on residents’ computer literacy and community involvement. We describe the interactions among participants of varying age, and the simulations that they designed and built. We also discuss the influence of age on participants' reactions to the workshop activities, and consider what implications these findings have for our goal of building and maintaining a cross-generation learning community.