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09:00 | Constructionism Lifetime Achievement Award SPEAKER: Cynthia Solomon ABSTRACT. This is a special interview of Cynthia Solomon who have been selected to receive an award for her achievements in and contributions to Constructionism and the use of computation in learning. This session will be an interview by Richard Noss. |
10:30 | Summer League: Supporting FLL Competition SPEAKER: unknown ABSTRACT. In the years 2013-2015, we organized three years of a comptetition in building and programming robots in Slovakia named Letná liga FLL (Summer League of FLL). We invented and designed the competition format. All the tasks are our original ones. The competition has a unique format allowing the teams to compete remotely, eliminating all travel costs. It drops the requirement of time-demanding preparations lasting many weeks that is present in most common robotics competitions, such as RoboCup Junior, FIRST LEGO League, and World Robot Olympiad. However, this competition stimulates an unprecedented level of creativity and provides an early and manifold feedback in a repetitive fashion. All solutions of the teams are published after the deadline, each being unique and special. After extensive, but well-motivated work on every task, each team compares their own solution with a plethora of other ways of thinking about the same problem. Children learn from each other on a great scale. We experience an euphoric shock and a feeling of nirvana when evaluating the various solutions after each round. The feedback from the participants has been positive and the dedication of many is beyond our early expectations. This format stimulates a regular and goal-oriented work in the after-school robotics clubs. An additional valuable outcome of our work is the set of 30 creative activities focused on various aspects such as robot design, robot control, programming, use of sensors, navigation, manipulation, physics, art, and other. Each taks has multiple and inspiring solutions. Activities can be solved in 1-3 club meetings. Everything is freely available on-line. |
11:00 | Learning Intentions and Educational Robots SPEAKER: Dave Catlin ABSTRACT. Some teachers run excellent lessons with educational robots. Others fail. Good teaching practice, is the key to success and prevails despite diverse and difficult challenges. What is good practice? How can we make sure teachers apply it to educational robots? In previous work, I proposed Assessment for Learning (AfL) answered these questions and provided a way to improve the success of educational robots. Learning Intentions is one strand of AfL. In this paper I review teacher and expert opinion on this topic. I review the previous publications on AfL and educational robots. Finally I suggest some guidelines, illustrated with examples, on how to apply these ideas to educational robots. This paper is based on experiences with Turtle type robots the Valiant Turtle, the Classic Roamer® and the Roamer®. |
11:30 | Math-based Coding Education in Korean School SPEAKER: unknown ABSTRACT. Recently, the Korean Ministry of Education announced three policies for education -software (SW) education, free semester system, and character education - to strengthen the future skills of learners. The implement into schools of the policies, however, has been hindered by the absence of curricula and the ambiguity of the assessment that meet the purpose of each policy. A way to resolve the problem is proposed in the study by reflecting Constructionism. An educational program, based on Constructionism, will foster the future skills of learners through 'learning by making'. (In Fig. 1,) where the program is summarized, exploratory activities through symbolic coding lead to meaningful experiences through physical coding, which in turn leads to another exploration on the next level. Within the process of coding, symbolic coding exploration is expected to promote learners’ computational thinking (CT) competencies and physical coding experience is expected to enhance their career skills and communication competencies, respectively. |
12:00 | 3D turtle coding activities for Korean primary education SPEAKER: unknown ABSTRACT. The recently revised national curriculum for primary school in Korea inserted constructive activities with "linking cubes" for 6-th grade math class to improve students’ spatial abilities. In addition, with the worldwide trend to regard coding education as great important, the Korea Ministry of Education announced that the class for coding be mandatory at primary schools after 2018. However, due to the absence of appropriate expressive systems for the shape of 3D cube stacks and the paucity of coding educational tools for primary school students, the schools will be suffered from a lot of difficulties to teach it. (As presented in Figure1,) 3D coding activities with the 3D turtle representation system and the 3D printer were designed to present the solution to overcome the hindrance. Moreover, the 3D turtle coding activities are expected to play the role as a bridge between primary schools and middle schools in both mathematics and coding education, which will make the students possible to enhance spatial abilities in linked curricula. |
10:30 | Beyond lesson recipes: first steps towards a repertoire for teaching primary computing SPEAKER: Chris Shelton ABSTRACT. In 2014, the UK government introduced a new National Curriculum for state schools in England with a greater emphasis on computer science and computational thinking. Teaching this new curriculum presented challenges to many primary school teachers and led to a demand for professional development and exemplar teaching resources. This paper argues that many of the resources created in response to the revised curriculum are ‘recipes’ for lessons that fail to prepare teachers to teach challenging and purposeful computing lessons. It argues that, instead of providing recipes, we need to develop teachers’ ‘repertoire’ of strategies for teaching computing and that our approach to doing this should take account of the context in which primary teachers now work. The paper describes professional development practices designed to help less confident teachers take their first steps away from model lessons and towards computing projects that reflect the needs and interests of the pupils they teach. In particular, this paper will focus on two aspects of these practices: a teaching sequence intended to scaffold teachers in planning and teaching computing, and an approach to meeting the needs of the range of learners in a primary classroom through self-directed challenges. These were intended to support primary school teachers in improving their confidence and capability to plan and teach computer programming. |
11:00 | Assessing Interpersonal Relationship Among Peers in a Constructionist Classroom: a Probabilistic Method SPEAKER: unknown ABSTRACT. This paper proposes an alternative approach to probabilistically assess some aspects of learner’s interpersonal relationship with their peers in classrooms using minimal information. We collected the data in a constructionist classroom of 8 students in Grade 2 at Darunsikkhalai School for Innovative Learning in Bangkok, Thailand. Total time spent with peers and the number of peers surrounding a student whose interpersonal relationship we are interested in studying were recorded on a random 17 days in one semester (comprising 60 days). We presented a probabilistic analysis to estimate the expected number of peers surrounding any student who is not the one we are interested in. In this way, we can compare the amount of peers surrounding a student of interest to that of a generic student. The preliminary results showed that a student of interest expressed varying degree of interpersonal relationship in different classes, or learning environments. This method allows us to maximally explore the potential of extracting maximum information from minimum data collection. Moreover, it can be a useful tool to help facilitators identify or design learning environments suitable for certain students. |
11:30 | Learning Emotional Aspects of Digital Competence By Creating Artefacts SPEAKER: unknown ABSTRACT. This contribution presents a 45-min workshop on media education designed for 11-years old children (grade 6). After a brief introduction offering some background information, the children are challenged to be creative. They work in groups of three or four plus a student from a pedagogy class (grade 12) as “gamemaster”. Using “task cards”, the children create stories or images individually and then present and discuss them within the group. After that, each group creates a drawing or Lego sculpture collaboratively. Workshops of this kind covering “cyber-bullying” have been conducted with 120 pupils |
12:00 | Samba School of the 21st Century : Learning in the Break Dance Community in Bangkok SPEAKER: Nalin Tutiyaphuengprasert ABSTRACT. The objective of this study is to observe the mechanics of learning in this dance community. I have also analyzed one case study in depth from observations and an interview of a dancer who found that Bboy dance experiences transformed his life and helped him improve his academic achievement in school. This study might give us some ideas on how to redesign learning and intervention in order to deliver “Samba School” (Papert, 1980) learning experiences in formal school context. |
13:30 | And now for something completely different: ToonTalk - a programming language that is not textual, block-based, or procedural SPEAKER: Ken Kahn ABSTRACT. The motivation behind this workshop is to introduce some different ways of thinking about computation. As Marvin Minsky wrote “If you understand something in only one way, then you don't really understand it at all” (Minsky, 1984). Nearly all constructionist programming languages are based upon the idea of users defining procedures. In some cases those procedures are associated with sprites or objects but the range of computation models is narrow. Many languages support concurrent computation but the ways in which these parallel computations communicate and synchronise is limited. Logo pioneered a syntax that was easier for beginners to read, write, and understand. Scratch and other block-based languages introduced a new kind of syntax that makes the construction of programs simpler and much less error-prone. Text and blocks, however, are not the only kinds of syntax possible. Seymour Papert once described Logo as the result of “child-engineering” the best ideas in computer science. In 1967 the Lisp programming language exemplified these ideas and strongly influenced the design of Logo. Computer science today contains many other ways of describing computation based upon logic, constraints, actors, higher-order functions, data flow, or rules. ToonTalk (Kahn, 1996) grew out of the goal to once again “child-engineer” the best ideas in computer science. Concurrent constraint programming (Saraswat, 1993) was chosen as the framework for the design of ToonTalk. Another set of computer science ideas that were crucial to the design of ToonTalk was the work on programming by demonstration or by example (Kahn, 2001). Another idea is that the syntax of a program could be not only visual but animated. This workshop will introduce participants to ToonTalk Reborn (Kahn, 2014) a new web-based implementation of ToonTalk. It runs on any device with a modern web browser, though it is easier to use on a laptop than with a touch device. More details in the paper "Integrating programming languages with web browsers" in the conference proceedings. No prior programming experience required. Any number of attendees welcome. A projector required. A good Internet connection is very desirable but not necessary. |
16:30 | Computational Thinking in School: reviving programming in the context of digital culture SPEAKER: Jose A. Valente ABSTRACT. Panel of specialists to discuss and understand: a) What is computation thinking? b) Can computational thinking only be developed through programming? c) What is the relation between what is being proposed as computational thinking and the powerful ideas of Papert? Are we just switching terminology? The panel should be formed by 1) Specialist from East Europe 2) Specialist from the UK 3) Specialist from Italy 4) Specialist from the USA |