Computational Thinking Equity in Elementary Classrooms: What Third-Grade Students Know and Can Do

The Computer Science Teachers Association has asserted that computational thinking equips students with essential critical thinking which allows them to conceptualize, analyze, and solve more complex problems. These skills are applicable to all content area as students learn to use strategies, ideas, and technological practices more effectively as digital natives. This research examined over 200 elementary students’ pre- and posttest changes in computational thinking from a 10-week coding program using adapted lessons from code.org’s Blockly programming language and CSUnplugged that were delivered as part of the regular school day. Participants benefited from early access to computer science (CS) lessons with increases in computational thinking and applying coding concepts to the real world. Interviews from participants included examples of CS connections to everyday life and interdisciplinary studies at school. Thus, the study highlights the importance of leveraging CS access in diverse elementary classrooms to promote young students’ computational thinking; motivation in CS topics; and the learning of essential soft-skills such as collaboration, persistence, abstraction, and creativity to succeed in today’s digital world

Enhancing the learning of programming using Scratch: a recommender-systems-based approach in non WEIRD communities

In today’s world, there is a growing need for professionals with computer skills in general, and programming in particular. This is so, both in WEIRD contexts and in contexts that are not. WEIRD is an acronym from English (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic Societies) and is used to refer to certain sectors of societies that are ”Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. The Ecuadorian State makes a high investment in the training of engineering career professionals offered by public universities. In Ecuador, these careers are highly demanded. However, a high student dropout is verified because of basic courses such as Fundamentals of programming in the first levels, with the consequent deficiencies in the performance of the careers. Additionally, the low qualification of students in computer skills indicates that they have not developed their computational thinking skills. In general terms, this situation contributes to the loss of competitiveness of non-WEIRD countries. For this reason, a pedagogical tool was introduced in teaching that allowed motivating programming learning, reducing dropout and improving academic performance in introductory programming courses at the university level. We present empirical evidence of the positive impact of Scratch on the Fundamentals of Programming courses. The use of this pedagogical tool allowed students to develop the concepts of programming logic and the use of basic control structures. Students who used Scratch scored better, reduced the number of suspensions and dropouts, and students were encouraged to enjoy the subject. On the other hand, when developing the exercises with Scratch in combination with the CARAMBA recommendation system, students were motivated to autonomous learning. The use of CARAMBA showed a positive correlation with the chances of success in the course. Specifically, > 52% success, whose result is 8% higher than the use of Scratch alone (without recommendations) and 21% higher than traditional education (without Scratch). The Scratch + CARAMBA tools were scaled to a school environment in non-WEIR contexts for programming learning. The post-application evaluation of the instrument indicated increases in exam scores in all grades analyzed. It should be noted that there was an average increase of 32% in the afternoon sections compared to the morning sections. This work opens a line of future research by bringing a pedagogical tool to different educational environments. The results allow us to propose improvements in CARAMBA’s recommendations, especially regarding the variables of usability, interactivity, language and pedagogical aspects. CARAMBA functionality should incorporate educational data mining tools that allow learning models based on the profile of the students. Another aspect that we intend to address is the scalability of the system in order to adapt it to other study scenarios with more users and number of exercises.En el mundo actual, existe cada vez mayor necesidad de profesionales con conocimientos de computación en general, y programación en particular. Esto es así, tanto en contextos WEIRD como en contextos que no lo son. WEIRD es un acrónimo procedente del inglés (Western, Educated, Industri alized, Rich and Democratic Societies) y es utilizado para referirse a ciertos sectores de sociedades que son “occidentales, educadas, industrializadas, ricas y democráticas. El Estado ecuatoriano realiza una alta inversión en la formación de profesionales de carreras de ingeniería ofertadas por las universidades públicas. En el Ecuador estas carreras son altamente demandadas. Sin embargo, se verifica una alta deserción estudiantil a causa de cursos básicos como Fundamentos de programación en los primeros niveles, con las consecuentes deficiencias en el desempeño de las carreras. Adicionalmente, la baja calificación de los estudiantes en competencias de computación indica que no tengan desarrollo-ladas sus habilidades de pensamiento computacional. En términos generales, esta situación contribuye a la perdida de la competitividad de los países non WEIRD. Por esta razón se introdujo en la enseñanza una herramienta pedagógica que permitió motivar el aprendizaje de programación, disminuir la deserción´ y mejorar el rendimiento académico en los cursos introductorios de programación a nivel universitario. Presentamos evidencia empírica del impacto positivo de Catch en los cursos de Fundamentos de Programación. El uso de esta herramienta pedagógica permitió desarrollar en los estudiantes los conceptos de lógica de programación y el uso de estructuras básicas de control. Los estudiantes que es-aron Catch obtuvieron mejores notas, redujeron la cantidad de suspensos y de deserciones, y se alentaron a los estudiantes a disfrutar de la asignatura. Por otro lado, al desarrollar los ejercicios con Catch en combinación con el sistema de recomendaciones CARAMBA los estudiantes se vieron motivados al aprendizaje autónomo. El uso de CARAMBA mostro una correlación positiva con las posibilidades de éxito en el curso. Concretamente, ¿52% de éxito, cuyo resultado 8% superior al uso solo de Catch (sin recomendaciones) y 21% superior a la enseñanza tradicional (sin Catch). Las herramientas Scratch+CARAMBA fueron escaladas a un ambiente escolar en contextos non WEIR para el aprendizaje de programación. La evaluación posterior a la aplicación del instrumento indico incrementos en las notas de los exámenes en todos los grados analizados. Vale destacar, que hubo un incremento del promedio de las notas del 32% en las secciones de la tarde respecto a las secciones matutinas. Este trabajo abre una línea de investigación futura al llevar una herramienta pedagógica a diferentes entornos educativos. Se pretende plantear mejoras en las recomendaciones de CARAMBA, en especial respecto a las variables de usabilidad, interactividad, lenguaje y de aspectos pedagógicos. En la funcionalidad de CARAMBA se deben incorporar herramientas de minería de datos educacionales que permitan modelos de aprendizaje basados en el perfil de los estudiantes. Otro aspecto que pretendemos abordar es la escalabilidad del sistema a fin de adaptarlo a otros escenarios de estudio con mas usuarios cantidad de ejercicios

EDUCATION AS A SOLUTION TO COMBAT RISING CYBERCRIME RATES AGAINST CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS

Ninety seven percent (97%) of people between the ages of 3 and 18 are found to be users of technology and internet services daily. This number also correlates with rising cyber crime rates against people in this age bracket. It is found that people between 3 and 18 years old are found to be technologically savvy but often lack the knowledge of how to protect themselves in online environments. Researchers have suggested that cybersecurity awareness training is an effective method at combating common forms of cyberattack such as social engineering. Social engineering attacks are found to make up 98% of successful cyberattacks and it is crucial that users of these internet and technology services are knowledgeable in protecting themselves. Cybersecurity education materials are commonly found in enterprise and higher education environments, but there is a gap of available research that evaluates the effectiveness of this education in the K-12 environment. Therefore, this project evaluates the following research questions to help address the gap: (Q1) What affective methods to educate children and teenagers on cybersecurity concepts? (Q2) What are best practices for topic selection when it comes to cybersecurity education in the 3–18-year age range? (Q3) What are unique challenges that may be encountered when implementing this type of education nationwide? The research will discover the answers for the proposed research questions by analyzing existing literature and reviewing case studies of successful cybersecurity education in K-12 schools. The selected case studies went through an inclusion and exclusion criteria which required the following items to be present: publishing by a reputable journal or conference, contain empirical data in form of pre and post assessment, why the method of teaching was selected, and explain limitations. The findings and conclusions from the case studies are: (Q1) Students are receptive to learning cybersecurity principles via multiple teaching styles. The case studies displayed self-guided, collaborative, and traditional instruction methods and students were shown to improve greatly in post assessment results. (Q2) Best practices for selecting topics in the case studies was to utilize age-appropriate cybersecurity educational materials published by government agencies. A finding from this is that these materials are not readily available for educators and must be sought out as they are considered optional items. (Q3) Scaling of these type of cybersecurity workshops is difficult due to resource constraints faced by many schools found in lower income and rural districts. The availability of cybersecurity professionals and university campus’s willingness to host these camps is scarce and leaves this type of experience out of reach for many students. Areas of further study are researching methods on how to effectively scale this sort of education by utilizing a remote learning model and the creation of a standardized age-appropriate curriculum

Permaeduculture;Towards sustainable learning environments

Sustainable development has become a key concern of our generation considering the various implications the mankind has had over its environment. The balance between consumption and production is an important factor that needs to be observed, in order to achieve sustainability in any given system. Application of sustainable principle has spread across disciplines ranging from service systems to product design. Especially in the field of educational services, there are many scopes of applying sustainable design principles to derive an educational model that rely on learning through thoughtful observation rather than thoughtless labor. Eventually, iterating the prevalent system into one that sustains itself organically in the course of time. This thesis attempts to understand sustainability in learning ecosystems in regards to consumption of information over production of knowledge in the prevalent learning environments. The model of education termed as “Permaeduculture” is conceived as an abstract idea derived from the parallels between natural ecosystems and ecosystem of knowledge, studied under this project. The context of this thesis is set in rural India where the community is advancing rapidly from a self-sustaining livelihood to a modern consumer economy. Focusing on a specific rural field site in the state of Himachal Pradesh, this project identifies various challenges faced by the prevalent education system, through the medium of participatory workshops, ethnographic research and grassroots innovation. Moreover, the study examines the role played by digital media in Indian education system and how rural communities are affected by it. The outcome of this project is a digital infrastructure proposed for the model of “Permaeduculture” in the form of a decentralized Mesh network

Designing personalised, authentic and collaborative learning with mobile devices: Confronting the challenges of remote teaching during a pandemic.

This article offers teachers a digital pedagogical framework, research-inspired and underpinned by socio-cultural theory, to guide the design of personalised, authentic and collaborative learning scenarios for students using mobile devices in remote learning settings during this pandemic. It provides a series of freely available online resources underpinned by our framework, including a mobile learning toolkit, a professional learning app, and robust, validated surveys for evaluating tasks. Finally, it presents a set of evidence-based principles for effective innovative teaching with mobile devices

Research-Informed Teaching in a Global Pandemic: "Opening up" Schools to Research

The teacher-research agenda has become a significant consideration for policy and professional development in a number of countries. Encouraging research-based teacher education programmes remains an important goal, where teachers are able to effectively utilize educational research as part of their work in school settings and to reflect on and enhance their professional development. In the last decade, teacher research has grown in importance across the three i’s of the teacher learning continuum: initial, induction and in-service teacher education. This has been brought into even starker relief with the global spread of COVID-19, and the enforced and emergency, wholesale move to digital education. Now, perhaps more than ever, teachers need the perspective and support of research-led practice, particularly in how to effectively use Internet technologies to mediate and enhance learning, teaching and assessment online, and new blended modalities for education that must be physically distant. The aim of this paper is to present a number of professional development open educational systems which exist or are currently being developed to support teachers internationally, to engage with, use and do research. Exemplification of the opening up of research to schools and teachers is provided in the chapter through reference to the European Union-funded Erasmus + project, BRIST: Building Research Infrastructures for School Teachers. BRIST is developing technology to coordinate and support teacher-research at a European level

Global Perspectives on Educational Innovations for Emergency Situations

This open access book focuses on making the transition from in-person, classroom education to other feasible alternative modes and methodologies to deliver education at all levels. The book presents and analyzes research questions to explore in this arena, including pedagogical issues relating to technological and infrastructure challenges, teacher professional development, issues of disparity, access and equity, and impact of government policies on education. It also provides unique opportunities and vehicles for generating scholarship that helps explain the varied educational needs, perspectives and solutions that arise during an emergency and the different roles educational institutions and educators may play during this time. Developed from a highly successful Presidential Session at the annual meeting of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), this edited volume presents AECT and its membership as the premier organization focusing on the provision of educational communications and technology leadership. In addition, it functions as a contemporary document of this global crisis as well as a rich resource for possible future emergency scenarios in the educational arena

Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Development: Synthesis Report, Mobile Learning Week 2019

(First paragraph) 2019’s Mobile Learning Week (MLW), UNESCO’s flagship event for information and communication technology (ICT) in education, focused on the theme ‘Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Development’. Held over five days in Paris, it comprised a sequence of high-profile events (a global conference, a policy forum and workshops, a symposium and strategy labs), and involved more than 1,500 participants from 140 countries (including Ministers of Education and ICT, other representatives from Member States, the private sector, academia and international organizations)