An Exploratory Analysis of Interactive Systems for Introducing Programming based on Cultural Viewpoint Metaphors

Having basic knowledge in computing is getting more importance nowadays. With this in mind, many applications have been developed in order to teach programming concepts to children, such as AgentSheets and Scratch, systems that use a visual programming language to create games and interactive animations. However, there is little research into communication strategies that are used by interactive systems to teach programming to kids. In this paper, we evaluate how both of these applications address cultural aspects that allow a progressive learning of programming concepts. We have found out that both systems address cultural aspects in a similar way. Their focus is to teach how to write programming codes using their visual language, but without gradually introducing programming concepts to the user.