An intuitive and educational programming tool with tangible blocks and AR

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a trend in teaching programming in elementary schools around the world. When teaching programming to lower grader students, robots and puzzles are often used to learn programming for easy understanding. However, those tools have limitations in execution results. Higher graders often use visual programming as a learning material. However, there is a problem that visual programming requires one computer for each individual student, and many students have to learn how to use a computer first. Therefore we propose a programming tool using tangible blocks and AR. This makes it possible to learn programming intuitively with fewer restrictions. Our tool is operated using a smartphone and tangible blocks without using a computer. By using AR, it is possible to create an intuitive programming that can interact with reality. We asked teachers who have experience teaching programming to children to assess the usefulness of our tool within programming education in school. As a result, there was an opinion that it might be suitable for multi-person programming.