Getting Started
What FRACTAL is, how the curriculum is organized, and what you need to teach it — no coding experience required.
What is FRACTAL?
FRACTAL stands for Furthering Rural Adoption of Computers and Technology through Artistic Lessons. It’s a middle school curriculum designed to help students explore art + computer science together through hands-on, creative, and meaningful learning experiences.
Why art and computer science?
We believe students learn best when they feel connected to what they’re learning. FRACTAL combines art and computer science to support creative expression and technical skills at the same time, show that computing is for everyone — not just “tech people” — and help students understand and build the tools they use every day, like computers, apps, and digital art.
Computer science and art share a lot in common: both involve design, pattern-making, abstraction, and iteration. When students work with software or build with a purpose that is creative or personal, they’re more likely to stay curious, engaged, and confident.
Who is FRACTAL for?
FRACTAL is designed for middle school students, especially those in rural or under-resourced schools, and for teachers of Art, Technology, and STEM — or anyone excited about cross-curricular learning.
FRACTAL makes space for every learner to shine, no matter their starting point. That’s why each lesson is grounded in the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) — a framework that helps remove barriers and create access for all students. Grounded in the understanding that there is no “average” learner, UDL shifts the focus from changing learners to reducing barriers in the environment. Instead of a single way to access content, participate, or demonstrate understanding, each FRACTAL lesson offers flexible options that support all learners.
How is the curriculum organized?
The FRACTAL curriculum is designed to be taught over approximately three weeks. Each week is organized into an Expedition, which includes 3–4 interdisciplinary lessons that integrate art and computer science.
Each Expedition spans one week (approximately 180 instructional minutes), divided into 45-minute lesson blocks, so teachers can adapt the sequence for block periods, rotating schedules, or after-school programs. A FRACTAL week includes 3–4 core lessons featuring both analog (hands-on) and digital art activities, optional enrichment and extension activities for deeper exploration or early finishers, and built-in reflection opportunities like exit tickets (“Pit Stops”) to help students track their growth.
End goal — build confidence + build a computer. By the end of the FRACTAL sequence, students will not only have developed strong creative computing skills — they’ll also be equipped with the tools and knowledge to build their own functioning computer. This culminating hands-on experience can take place during an after-school session or Saturday event as a celebration of everything students have learned.
As a teacher, what will I get?
You’ll receive a lesson guide for every lesson, Google slide decks with optional scripting to support implementation, student handouts, the Fractal Design Studio housing our three digital art tools, and support from FRACTAL facilitators.
Wait — do I need to know how to code to teach FRACTAL?
Nope! FRACTAL is designed to support both new and experienced tech users. If you can follow a recipe, have a computer with internet access, and drag and drop on your computer, you have what you need. You’ll receive clear lesson guides and slides for students to follow (including answer keys and animated slides), optional scaffolds for each learning journey, professional learning to help you orient to the curriculum and tools, and ongoing support from the FRACTAL team.
What materials or tech do I need?
For 1–2 days a week you’ll need student devices (e.g., tablets or Chromebooks with internet) to access the Fractal Art Studio. Beyond that: printed handouts and/or digital copies of slides, and standard art supplies (markers, glue, scissors) for paper-based tasks.
How were the Expeditions developed?
FRACTAL Expeditions were developed through an ongoing process of co-design, classroom testing, and revision with teachers and students. Teachers helped shape the curriculum from the beginning by sharing their classroom expertise, testing activities and tools, reviewing lesson materials, and identifying supports that would make the Expeditions engaging and practical to teach. Students also played an important role — we observed and co-taught lessons in classrooms, listened to student feedback, and studied how students interacted with the activities, technology, and ideas.
Beginning in 2024–2025, we worked with educators and students across multiple school communities to design, test, and improve the Expeditions. We then piloted the lessons in North Carolina classrooms, using what we learned to refine the curriculum before broader implementation.
What is my role in this work?
Our goal is to understand whether FRACTAL makes a difference for students, how it works in real classrooms, and what educators need to implement it successfully. During the 2026–2027 school year, FRACTAL will enter a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) — a research study designed to answer an important question: “Does participating in FRACTAL make a difference for students?”
Participating teachers and students will be part of either FRACTAL instruction or comparison instruction, allowing researchers to compare students’ experiences and learning. Random assignment helps make those groups as similar as possible at the start of the study, giving greater confidence that differences seen later — such as changes in student engagement, creative confidence, or computer science learning — are connected to the FRACTAL experience.
By participating, educators are helping us build strong evidence about how creative, art-integrated computer science learning works in real middle school classrooms, identify the supports teachers and students need, improve FRACTAL before it is shared more broadly, and demonstrate the value of giving more students meaningful opportunities to engage in computer science through creativity, art, and technology.