Introduction to Computational Thinking with Scratch for Teacher Training for Spanish Primary School Teachers in Mathematics

In recent years, the inclusion of computational thinking in education has become very important. This is a response to the needs of the evolution of our society and the skills demanded in students to obtain practical and integrated training. For this reason, the educational inclusion of these types of practices, strategies, and skills has been the subject of study in recent years. However, it is equally important to prepare and analyse the initial training of future teachers in this area. This research paper presents an empirical experience in which the degree of development of skills associated with computational thinking in preservice primary teachers is examined. For this purpose, programming practices with Scratch were carried out with a total of 149 students of primary education university degrees as part of their training in mathematics education. An experiment was designed for a control group and an experimental group with initial and final measurements using a validated diagnostic instrument consisting of 30 questions associated with computational concepts and their application: a computational thinking test. The result of the experience is positive, as a more significant improvement was observed in the experimental group, which was also accompanied by the impressions, provided by participants, that point in a positive, useful, and practical direction in terms of the development of this type of educational practice being relevant enough to introduce to the teaching and learning process of mathematics

Beyond Programming and Crafts: Towards Computational Thinking in Basic Education

Continually increasing demands are being placed on the educational system to prepare students with technical skills due to the exponential implementation of information, technology and automation in the workforce.  Students should work with design, problem-solving and computational methods and tools early on in their school lives in basic education and across diverse areas of learning. It has been argued that a fundamental understanding of technology requires computational thinking. However, teachers have difficulties integrating technology and programming into students’ active learning in crafts. In this systematic literature review, the main aim is to view descriptions of programming through craft science-based concepts of craft labour and, thereafter, to seek examples to enable teaching programming in craft education during basic education. Considering the selection criteria to undertake the analysis, the final data set comprised of 10 articles dealing with programming and craft, and 68 articles describing the possibilities of combining crafting and programming in basic education. According to the results, it seems that contemporary multi-material and design-based holistic craft may encompass different forms of technology and programming such as prototyping, robotics, microcontrollers, 3D modelling, applications for documentation, visualisation, share-out and storytelling via multiple channels. These all help students to learn computational thinking as they start out with design and practical problems and proceed to technology-mediated programming skills. It is hoped that the findings will provide theoretical perspectives for practitioners and policymakers to see the mutual benefit arising from the integration of crafts, technology and computation in basic education

Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Programs in Data Science

The Park City Math Institute (PCMI) 2016 Summer Undergraduate Faculty Program met for the purpose of composing guidelines for undergraduate programs in Data Science. The group consisted of 25 undergraduate faculty from a variety of institutions in the U.S., primarily from the disciplines of mathematics, statistics and computer science. These guidelines are meant to provide some structure for institutions planning for or revising a major in Data Science

App creation in schools for different curricula subjects - lesson learned

The next generation of jobs will be characterized by an increased demand for people with computational and problem solving skills. In Austria, computer science topics are underrepresented in school curricula hence teaching time for these topics is limited. From primary through secondary school, only a few opportunities exist for young students to explore programming. Furthermore, today's teachers are rarely trained in computer science, which impairs their potential to motivate students in these courses. Within the "No One Left Behind" (NOLB) project, teachers were supported to guide and assist their students in their learning processes by constructing ideas through game making. Thus, students created games that referred to different subject areas by using the programming tool Pocket Code, an app developed at Graz University of Technology (TU-Graz). This tool helps students to take control of their own education, becoming more engaged, interested, and empowered as a result. To ensure an optimal integration of the app in diverse subjects the different backgrounds (technical and non-technical) of teachers must be considered as well. First, teachers were supported to use Pocket Code in the different subjects in school within the feasibility study of the project. Observed challenges and difficulties using the app have been gathered. Second, we conducted interviews with teachers and students to underpin our onsite observations. As a result, it was possible to validate Pocket Codes' potential to be used in a diverse range of subjects. Third, we focused especially on those teachers who were not technically trained to provide them with a framework for Pocket Code units, e.g., with the help of structured lesson plans and predefined templates.Comment: 10 pages, 5 tables EduLearn 201

Defining and evaluating conflictive animations for programming education : the case of Jeliot ConAn

A review of the practical uses of errors in education reveals three contexts where errors have been shown to help: teaching conceptual knowledge, changing students’ attitudes and promoting learning skills. Conflictive animations form a novel approach to teaching programming that follows a long tradition on research and development on program animation tools. Conflictive animations link the benefits of errors with program animation tools and programming education. This approach involves presenting to the students conflictive animations that do not animate faithfully the programs or concepts taught. Conflictive animations are versatile enough to cover the fundamental building blocks of programs such as operators, expressions and statements. With conflictive animations a novel set of learning activities can be introduced to computer science classes. This conflictive dimension of activities augments an engagement taxonomy for animation tools at all levels. They are an example of activities that promote critical thinking. A particular implementation of conflictive animations has been empirically evaluated aiming for ecological validity rather than statistical significance. Results indicate that students using conflictive animations improve their metacognitive skills, and, when compared to a control group, their conceptual knowledge improves at a better rate

Kerangka rekabentuk Carta Selak Rangkaian Berintegrasi Teori Gagne Sembilan Peristiwa Pembelajaran

Kajian ini merupakan sebuah kajian terhadap Kerangka Rekabentuk Carta Selak Rangkaian Berintegrasi Teori Gagne Sembilan Peristiwa Pembelajaran. Tujuan kajian ini dilakukan adalah bagi mencadangkan sebuah Kerangka Rekabentuk Carta Selak Rangkaian Berintegrasi Teori Gagne Sembilan Peristiwa Pembelajaran yang sesuai diaplikasikan oleh bakal guru dan juga guru bagi sebuah sesi pengajaran dan pembelajaran yang berkesan dan seterusnya meningkatkan kefahaman dan pengetahuan pelajar dalam mata pelajaran yang diajar oleh guru. Metodologi yang digunakan adalah berdasarkan Model ADDIE iaitu peringkat analisis, peringkat rekabentuk, peringkat pembangunan, peringkat implimentasi dan peringkat penilaian. Hasil daripada dapatan kajian yang menggunakan model TAM melihat persepsi dari kebergunaan (tahap tinggi dan min 3.02), kesenangan mengguna (tahap tinggi dan min 3.03) dan sikap penggunaan ( diterima dan min 2.65) terhadap Kerangka Rekabentuk Carta Selak Rangkaian Berintegrasi Teori Gagne Sembilan Peristiwa Pembelajaran. Dapatan tersebut menunjukkan bahawa ia digunakan dalam sesi pengajaran dan pembelajaran di bilik darjah oleh responden pada masa hadapan. Cadangan kajian pada masa hadapan adalah berkaitan spesifikasi dan teknikal kerangka rekabentuk supaya dapat memudahkan pembinaan kerangka, menjimatkan kos dan masa

The Practices of Play and Informal Learning in the miniGEMS STEAM Camp

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) play an important role in the educational reform and global economy. However, STEM education lacks the hands-on laboratory in the formal middle school and high school curricula. The widespread gender gap in multiple STEM disciplines causes middle-school aged girls have lower positive attitudes and interests towards STEM fields than male students. In recent years, Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) education has been viewed as other approaches to increase students’ interests and improve study accesses to STEM fields in the United States. The addition of the arts in STAEM education provides more learning opportunities and real-world contexts which meet more students’ interests. miniGEMS 2017 was a free two-week summer STEAM and programming camp for middle school girls in grades six to eight hosted by the Autonomous Vehicle Systems (AVS) Research and Education Laboratory at the University of the Incarnate Word (UIW). miniGEMS was the first free camp with a special focus on engineering and programming in San Antonio. The camp utilized project-based learning curriculum and provided multiple hands-on experiments, field trips, and significant interactions with guest speakers, all of which were designed to increase the middle school girls’ interests in STEM-related fields. This paper provides an overview of miniGEMS STEAM camp, motivation for miniGEMS camp, and details on practicing project-based play activities in an informal learning environment.Cockrell School of Engineerin

Research questions and approaches for computational thinking curricula design

Teaching computational thinking (CT) is argued to be necessary but also admitted to be a very challenging task. The reasons for this, are: i) no general agreement on what computational thinking is; ii) no clear idea nor evidential support on how to teach CT in an effective way. Hence, there is a need to develop a common approach and a shared understanding of the scope of computational thinking and of effective means of teaching CT. Thus, the consequent ambition is to utilize the preliminary and further research outcomes on CT for the education of the prospective teachers of secondary, further and higher/adult education curricula

Teaching programming with computational and informational thinking

Computers are the dominant technology of the early 21st century: pretty well all aspects of economic, social and personal life are now unthinkable without them. In turn, computer hardware is controlled by software, that is, codes written in programming languages. Programming, the construction of software, is thus a fundamental activity, in which millions of people are engaged worldwide, and the teaching of programming is long established in international secondary and higher education. Yet, going on 70 years after the first computers were built, there is no well-established pedagogy for teaching programming. There has certainly been no shortage of approaches. However, these have often been driven by fashion, an enthusiastic amateurism or a wish to follow best industrial practice, which, while appropriate for mature professionals, is poorly suited to novice programmers. Much of the difficulty lies in the very close relationship between problem solving and programming. Once a problem is well characterised it is relatively straightforward to realise a solution in software. However, teaching problem solving is, if anything, less well understood than teaching programming. Problem solving seems to be a creative, holistic, dialectical, multi-dimensional, iterative process. While there are well established techniques for analysing problems, arbitrary problems cannot be solved by rote, by mechanically applying techniques in some prescribed linear order. Furthermore, historically, approaches to teaching programming have failed to account for this complexity in problem solving, focusing strongly on programming itself and, if at all, only partially and superficially exploring problem solving. Recently, an integrated approach to problem solving and programming called Computational Thinking (CT) (Wing, 2006) has gained considerable currency. CT has the enormous advantage over prior approaches of strongly emphasising problem solving and of making explicit core techniques. Nonetheless, there is still a tendency to view CT as prescriptive rather than creative, engendering scholastic arguments about the nature and status of CT techniques. Programming at heart is concerned with processing information but many accounts of CT emphasise processing over information rather than seeing then as intimately related. In this paper, while acknowledging and building on the strengths of CT, I argue that understanding the form and structure of information should be primary in any pedagogy of programming