6 research outputs found
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A guided tour of Forms/3
Forms/3 is a declarative visual programming language that aims to provide general purpose programming language capabilities in a simple, form-based approach. This report provides an example-driven introduction to programming in Forms/3
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Exception handling in the visual programming language Forms/3
Exception handling is a general purpose tool found in many modern programming language, but most work to date is based on textual languages. We present an approach to exception handling in a new context, the visual programming language Forms/3. The visual nature of Forms/3 supports an effective approach to exception handling without the use of new language constructs. We show that a visual programming language not only can support a robust style of exception handling with good software engineering characteristics, but also that it can do so without compromising the characteristics of simplicity, concreteness, and immediate feedback
A consolidação de conceitos de programação utilizando a robótica educativa
Relatório da prática de ensino supervisionada, Ensino de Informática, Universidade de Lisboa, 2012A dificuldade em compreender e aplicar conceitos abstratos de programação
pelos alunos, foi identificada como um problema no aprendizagem da programação.
O presente relatório descreve uma prática de ensino supervisionada, com o objetivo
de consolidar alguns conceitos de programação numa turma do 12º do curso
profissional de Técnico de Gestão de Informática. Foram lecionadas cinco aulas do
módulo 17 da disciplina de Linguagens de Programação a um grupo de sete alunos.
Como estratégia de ensino, foi apresentado um problema aos alunos sobre o
estacionamento automático de veículos. Os alunos trabalharam em grupo com o
objetivo de encontrar soluções e programá-las nos robôs da Lego® Mindstorms®
NXT, para três tipos de estacionamento: em espinha, em paralelo e em linha. A
Robótica Educativa constituiu o instrumento principal para o ensino dos conceitos de
programação, juntamente com um conjunto de princípios e estratégias pedagógicas.
A avaliação das aprendizagens incidiu principalmente na realização de um
questionário de autodiagnóstico e de um teste de diagnóstico no início da
intervenção, e na realização de um questionário de autoavaliação e de um teste de
avaliação no final da intervenção. Após a intervenção foi realizada uma discussão de
grupo para avaliar a perceção da turma em relação à intervenção.
Verificou-se que a Robótica Educativa, em associação com um conjunto de
princípios e estratégias pedagógicas, poderá ter contribuído para a consolidação de
conceitos de programação.The difficulty in understanding and applying abstract concepts of computer
programming by students was identified as a problem in learning programming.
This report describes a practice of supervised teaching in order to allow the
consolidation of some programming concepts in a 12th grade class of a professional
course of Management of Information Technology Technician. Five lessons were
given to a group of seven students in the Unit 17 of the subject Programming
Languages
As a teaching strategy, a problem was presented to the students about the
automatic parking of vehicles. The students worked in groups with the purpose of
finding solutions and programming them in Lego® Mindstorms® NXT robots, for
three types of parking: angle, perpendicular and parallel. Educational Robotics using
the Lego robots was the main tool for teaching programming concepts, along with a
set of principles and teaching strategies.
The evaluation focused on a self-diagnostic questionnaire and a diagnostic
test at the beginning of the intervention, as well as a self-assessment questionnaire
and an evaluation test at the end of the intervention. A focus group was conducted
after the intervention, to assess the perception of the class about the intervention.
It was found that Educational Robotics, in association with a set of principles
and teaching strategies, might have contributed to the consolidation of programming
concepts
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Generalizing abstractions in form-based visual programming languages : from direct manipulation to static representation
We believe concreteness, direct manipulation and responsiveness in a visual programming language increase its usefulness. However, these characteristics present a challenge in generalizing programs for reuse, especially when concrete examples are used as one way of achieving concreteness. In this thesis, we present a technique to solve this problem by deriving generality automatically through the analysis of logical relationships among concrete program entities from the perspective of a particular computational goal. Use of this technique allows a fully general form-based program with reusable abstractions to be derived from one that was specified in terms of concrete examples and direct manipulation. Also addressed in this thesis is how to statically represent the generalized programs. In general, we address how to design better static representations. A weakness of many interactive visual programming languages is their static representations. Lack of an adequate static representation places a heavy cognitive burden on a VPL's programmers, because they must remember potentially long dynamic sequences of screen displays in order to understand a previously-written program. However, although this problem is widely acknowledged, research on how to design better static representations for interactive VPLs is still in its infancy. Building upon the cognitive dimensions developed for programming languages by cognitive psychologists Green and others, we have developed a set of concrete benchmarks for VPL designers to use when designing new static representations. These benchmarks provide design-time information that can be used to improve a VPL's static representation