Teaching Computational Thinking to K-12 Educators through Distance Learning

Abstract

This paper reports an experience of teaching Computational Thinking (CT) to K-12 educators through an online Scratch programming short course. The meeting of CT and modern technologies is extending the use of coding in K-12 education. An essential requisite for this to prosper is the teacher prepa- ration. However, most current teacher training programs fail to supply with pedagogical knowledge for educators to teach CT. Thus, it is critical to present CT to K-12 teachers, providing proper conditions to learn and use its concepts. In this context, this work aimed to design and implement an online Scratch programming course for K-12 educators. Results suggested that using Scratch to teach CT for K-12 educators is adequate, and analyzing educators context when presenting tutorial Scratch projects is relevant.