Work in Progress: Mflow, a Flow-based Music Programming Platform for Young Children

Students of all socioeconomic backgrounds love music and express their identity through music. There are strong historical connections between music and computing, and computer-based music has a heavy presence in contemporary popular culture. Thus, programming electronic music can provide the type of authentic learning experience that fosters participation in computer science (CS) by minoritized students. Although important efforts have been made in that direction, they have not reached young children in mainstream public classrooms, particularly in schools serving children from low-income and marginalized backgrounds. Developing a computational tool and educational program that reaches this key demographic holds the potential to greatly increase CS knowledge and participation in the future workforce. For this, our team has created M-flow, a flow-based music programming platform that seeks to be engaging for children from the outset, and that makes it extremely easy for non-specialized teachers to learn and implement CS activities in the classroom.