WiPSE '13Pub Date : 2013-11-11DOI: 10.1145/2532748.2532768
Nataša Grgurina, E. Barendsen, Bert Zwaneveld, W. Grift, Idzard Stoker
{"title":"Computational thinking skills in Dutch secondary education","authors":"Nataša Grgurina, E. Barendsen, Bert Zwaneveld, W. Grift, Idzard Stoker","doi":"10.1145/2532748.2532768","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2532748.2532768","url":null,"abstract":"Computational Thinking is regarded as a necessary analytical skill for young people in the present day information society. We report on an ongoing design research project on Computational Thinking (CT) skills in Dutch secondary computer science (CS) education. The first phase of the project investigates the occurrence and nature of typical CT aspects in existing CS teaching materials, teacher's pedagogical content knowledge and policy documents. In the poster we focus on the overall research design and on the method and preliminary results of the first phase.","PeriodicalId":386540,"journal":{"name":"WiPSE '13","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125228895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WiPSE '13Pub Date : 2013-11-11DOI: 10.1145/2532748.2532755
I. Ioannou, C. Angeli
{"title":"Teaching computer science in secondary education: a technological pedagogical content knowledge perspective","authors":"I. Ioannou, C. Angeli","doi":"10.1145/2532748.2532755","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2532748.2532755","url":null,"abstract":"In the study herein, Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK), a framework that extends the conceptualization of Pedagogical Content Knowledge, was adopted in order to teach three computer science concepts, namely, \"Data,\" \"Processing,\" and \"Information\". Technology Mapping, a method proposed in the literature for developing TPCK, was used for rethinking the instructional design of the unit \"Data-Processing-Information\", so that Excel could be adequately utilized for teaching it. In particular, the technical affordances of Excel were used in a powerful pedagogical way in order to eliminate learners' existing misconceptions about the three concepts. Twelve eighth graders, five girls and seven boys, participated in the study. Students had basic computing skills, but no prior knowledge about how to use Excel. The classroom teacher chose to use Excel, because it is a tool that enables quick data entry, real-time data processing, as well as immediate visualization of the outcomes. The duration of the lesson was 45 minutes. According to the results, the framework of TPCK and the Technology Mapping approach proved to be effective for teaching the three concepts and for correcting students' related misconceptions.","PeriodicalId":386540,"journal":{"name":"WiPSE '13","volume":"274 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127063202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WiPSE '13Pub Date : 2013-11-11DOI: 10.1145/2532748.2532766
B. Sabitzer, S. Pasterk, Sabrina M. Elsenbaumer
{"title":"Informatics is COOL: Cooperative and computer-assisted open learning","authors":"B. Sabitzer, S. Pasterk, Sabrina M. Elsenbaumer","doi":"10.1145/2532748.2532766","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2532748.2532766","url":null,"abstract":"Informatics is COOL -- as a subject and as a tool. In this paper COOL refers to three different aspects of learning: First of all, COOL stands for \"cool\" in the sense of interesting, motivating or fun, topics that students like to learn and methods that enhance learning, e.g. brain-based teaching. Furthermore, COOL can be the abbreviation of COoperative Open Learning, an Austrian teaching model based on the Dalton-Plan or COmputer-assisted Open Learning. This paper first describes all three forms of COOL learning and gives examples for COOL Informatics lessons. The evaluation results of two pilot projects, one in a primary school and one in a university programming course at our university, suggest that COOL is worth being implemented and refined in all levels of school and university.","PeriodicalId":386540,"journal":{"name":"WiPSE '13","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129261681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WiPSE '13Pub Date : 2013-11-11DOI: 10.1145/2532748.2532759
D. Thompson, T. Bell
{"title":"Adoption of new computer science high school standards by New Zealand teachers","authors":"D. Thompson, T. Bell","doi":"10.1145/2532748.2532759","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2532748.2532759","url":null,"abstract":"Computer science was progressively introduced as a subject in New Zealand high schools between 2011 and 2013, and teachers have played a key role in the success of the introduction of the new curriculum. This paper looks at how the process has worked from their point of view, primarily by comparing teacher responses to two surveys, one early in the process and one after all three years of material had been introduced. We look at the support teachers have had to prepare to teach the new topics, and we identify the aspects of the transition that worked well and the aspects have been problematic. The two surveys reveal an increase in teacher confidence after they had professional development and gained experience teaching the new standards.","PeriodicalId":386540,"journal":{"name":"WiPSE '13","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123378091","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WiPSE '13Pub Date : 2013-11-11DOI: 10.1145/2532748.2532767
P. Haden, J. Gasson
{"title":"It takes a village to teach information technology","authors":"P. Haden, J. Gasson","doi":"10.1145/2532748.2532767","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2532748.2532767","url":null,"abstract":"The recent introduction of a radically updated national secondary school curriculum in computer science (CS) and information technology (IT) has left many New Zealand high school teachers unprepared and anxious. At Otago Polytechnic, we are currently implementing a programme of supported teacher development that joins tertiary teachers, tertiary students and secondary teachers in collaboratively addressing problems of content knowledge, teaching methods and curricular materials. Our aim is to establish a long-term working partnership that will serve to enrich secondary education and strengthen the diversity and preparedness of incoming tertiary students.","PeriodicalId":386540,"journal":{"name":"WiPSE '13","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131937159","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WiPSE '13Pub Date : 2013-11-11DOI: 10.1145/2532748.2532762
Giora Alexandron, M. Armoni, M. Gordon, D. Harel
{"title":"On teaching programming with nondeterminism","authors":"Giora Alexandron, M. Armoni, M. Gordon, D. Harel","doi":"10.1145/2532748.2532762","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2532748.2532762","url":null,"abstract":"Non-determinism (ND) is a fundamental concept in computer science, and comes in two main flavors. One is the kind of ND that appears in automata theory and formal languages. The other, which we term operative, appears in non-deterministic programming languages and in the context of concurrent and distributed systems. We believe that it is important to teach the two types of ND, especially as ND has become a very prominent characteristic of computerized systems. Currently, students are mainly introduced to ND of the first type, which is known to be hard to teach and learn. Our findings suggest that learning operative ND might be easier, and that students can reach a significant understanding of this concept when it is introduced in the context of a programming course that deals with a non-deterministic programming language like the language of Live Sequence Charts (LSC). Based on that, we suggest teaching operative ND in the context of concurrent and distributed programming, a topic which is covered by a new knowledge area that was added in Computer Science Curricula 2013.","PeriodicalId":386540,"journal":{"name":"WiPSE '13","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115705489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WiPSE '13Pub Date : 2013-11-11DOI: 10.1145/2532748.2532750
Monika Gujberova, I. Kalas
{"title":"Designing productive gradations of tasks in primary programming education","authors":"Monika Gujberova, I. Kalas","doi":"10.1145/2532748.2532750","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2532748.2532750","url":null,"abstract":"In several countries, we can recently notice increasing demand to establish modern Computer Science (CS) or Informatics or Computing education in the primary and secondary schools, which would liberate from the common ICT in education conception. In Slovakia we have proceeded in the opposite way -- establishing mandatory CS subject named Informatics nearly 30 years ago in all secondary schools and in 2000 (as a pilot) and 2008 (as a regular subject) in all primary schools. Moreover, educational programming has always been one of the key components of this subject. In this paper, we report on one of our on-going research activities in the area of building and integrating our conception of educational programming into regular primary Informatics. Namely, we present the process and findings of a qualitative study, in which we develop and verify a new approach to designing programming tasks for primary students. We want to understand what cognitive demands these tasks pose to primary students, what the students consider difficult and what they consider easy -- we are in search of better pedagogy for the primary programming education. To meet these goals, we need to identify elementary cognitive operations in primary programming and on the basis of that learn how to be more competent in considering the level of difficulty of the programming tasks and how to design proper gradational sequences (gradations) of tasks, which will support smooth learning process of the primary students' programming skills and early computational thinking -- carefully respecting developmental appropriateness of these activities.","PeriodicalId":386540,"journal":{"name":"WiPSE '13","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121160422","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WiPSE '13Pub Date : 2013-11-11DOI: 10.1145/2532748.2532771
Hiroyuki Nagataki, Yoshiaki Nakano, Midori Nobe, Tatsuya Tohyama, S. Kanemune
{"title":"A visual learning tool for database operation","authors":"Hiroyuki Nagataki, Yoshiaki Nakano, Midori Nobe, Tatsuya Tohyama, S. Kanemune","doi":"10.1145/2532748.2532771","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2532748.2532771","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper we propose sAccess, a web-based learning tool for database education. It focuses on introductory computer science education for high school and college. sAccess has an easy-to-use query interface for manipulating databases. Using this tool, students can learn the fundamental knowledge of relational database practically. In this paper, we will explain the overview of design and implementation of sAccess.","PeriodicalId":386540,"journal":{"name":"WiPSE '13","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122458140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WiPSE '13Pub Date : 2013-11-11DOI: 10.1145/2532748.2532770
Pawel Perekietka, Agnieszka Kukla, Przemyslaw Pela
{"title":"Scout patrol secret grilles: one more CS unplugged-style activity on cryptography","authors":"Pawel Perekietka, Agnieszka Kukla, Przemyslaw Pela","doi":"10.1145/2532748.2532770","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2532748.2532770","url":null,"abstract":"Inspired by CS Unplugged [1] project that is aimed at presenting important topics in computing, without using computers, we have developed a new supplementary activity on symmetric key encryption. One may use this activity to give a broader understanding of Internet web browser security and its mathematical (cryptographic) principles to primary and secondary school students.","PeriodicalId":386540,"journal":{"name":"WiPSE '13","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129051094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WiPSE '13Pub Date : 2013-11-11DOI: 10.1145/2532748.2532756
C. Mirolo, Doranna Di Vano
{"title":"\"Welcome to Nimrod\" to learn CS ideas in the middle school","authors":"C. Mirolo, Doranna Di Vano","doi":"10.1145/2532748.2532756","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2532748.2532756","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is about an attempt to introduce some of the ideas and way of thinking of computer science in the middle school, through an assortment of extra-curricular activities built around Nimrod, a computer game ante litteram (1951), its historical context and other related materials. Our aim in the long run is to enable pupils to master information processing tasks intellectually. We think, indeed, that this ability cannot be achieved by the mere use of ICT tools, where the distinction between form and meaning as well as the very idea of processing tend to fade away. Among the key features of our approach are the following: more emphasis on mental processes than on concepts; unplugged paper and cardboard artifacts that are fully within the pupils' grasp; playful activities to encourage pupils' engagement; reference to the history of computing, both as a source of content and as meta-knowledge for the teachers; cross-disciplinary links to foster teachers' collaboration. The feedback collected in three years of experimentation allows a preliminary assessment of the program in terms of pupils' acceptance and engagement, topics of interest to them and, to a limited extent, outreach potential.","PeriodicalId":386540,"journal":{"name":"WiPSE '13","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114186683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}