What children ask about computers, the Internet, robots, mobiles, games etc.

Abstract

For all teachers, it is important to know what questions their pupils are interested in. They can then adjust the contents of their teaching and increase their pupils' motivation and learning progress. We interviewed more than 600 primary school children to find out what they want to know about computers, mobile phones, robots, the Internet etc. as representatives of computer science and information technology. Using the qualitative content analysis a corresponding category system was formed from the 2594 questions we collected. From the results, we created a two-dimensional category system: The main dimension consists of the perceivable artifacts Internet, computers, robots, mobile phones, sound and pictures, game consoles, and games. The second dimension consists of the sub-categories for the perspective of the question: history and future, operation, potential, development and production, and safety and durability. Using these subcategories it is possible for teachers to classify the children's questions, to look for questions not asked and to look at computer science and information technology from five different perspectives together with the children.