Teaching Computational Reasoning without a Computer

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

With the growing need for STEM workers in the job market, schools tend to look for extra-curricular activities that promote this type of skills. With activities like The Inventors or Happy Code, schools encourage kids to have a mindset more open towards technology. Despite these efforts, the tools available to teach programming to primary school students are still lacking. Available solutions can be too difficult to understand, overly expensive for school budgets or may require IT infrastructure that is lacking from the majority of public schools. As a result, this paper aims to create a concept that can convey the fundamentals of programming/Logical Thinking in an accessible and fun way, without using a computer. For this purpose we use a micro-controller, Micro: Bit, and a physical, puzzle-like representation of a programming framework, called MakeCode.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings: IECON 2019 - 45th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
Pages6795-6800
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781728148786
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2019
Event45th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, IECON 2019 - Lisbon, Portugal
Duration: 14 Oct 201917 Oct 2019

Publication series

NameIECON Proceedings (Industrial Electronics Conference)
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
Volume2019-October
ISSN (Print)1553-572X

Conference

Conference45th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, IECON 2019
Country/TerritoryPortugal
CityLisbon
Period14/10/1917/10/19

Keywords

  • extra-curricular activities
  • Logical Thinking
  • Micro-controller
  • Programming fundamentals
  • Puzzle Representation
  • technology mindset

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Teaching Computational Reasoning without a Computer'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this