Teaching 21st century proficiencies in high schools by engaging students in creative digital projects

A goal of the newly created Digital Culture Creative Classrooms (DC3) at ASU is to bring the proficiency-based curriculum designed for our undergraduates, to middle and high school classrooms. we believe that skills such as computational thinking, collaboration, creativity and innovation, and information literacy can be taught in a highly effective way by using aesthetic challenges as a motivation. In other words, by engaging students in digital-arts projects, they are naturally driven to acquire many new skills that are simply required by the digital tools in order to achieve their aesthetic goals.