Deborah Stevenson, director of The Center for Children's Books at the iSchool, will present the App Authors research project at the Border-Crossing in Children’s Literature: The Second International Symposium for Children's Literature, which will be held on June 14-15 at Princeton University. The symposium will facilitate an exchange of ideas on new issues in children’s literature research between scholars from the East and West.
Stevenson, who is a principal investigator on the App Authors project with Associate Professor Kate McDowell, will give the talk, "App Authors: Coding Outside the Educational Box." She will discuss how the three-year project, App Authors: Closing the App Gap II, has developed a curriculum for use in school and public libraries that teaches children aged eight to twelve to create their own apps.
"Early exposure like App Authors frames STEM work as a field in which these young people can be contributors and participants, not merely consumers," said Stevenson. "The project provides librarians in public and school libraries with tools to help them teach children computational literacy through app design and allows for valuable mentoring and peer experience as young people work with one another and share their creations with young audiences."
Stevenson also serves as the editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, one of the nation's leading children's book review journals. Her research interests include children's literature and contemporary culture, the history of children's literature, and genre theory. App Authors is funded through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.