Karen H. Jin
Mihaela Sabin
ABSTRACT
Physical computing engages students who are learning how to program through hands-on projects with tangible devices. Many of these projects are fun and artistic, but may not be very helpful in demonstrating fundamental but non-obvious concepts such as variables, conditionals or complex control flow. With access to many fun "gadgets", e.g., sensors, motors, LEDs, etc., students could get very excited with their projects, while not necessarily learning enough about programming and computational problem solving. This work presents the authors' experience of teaching a physical computing workshop for middle school students using Adafruit Circuit Playground Express and Microsoft MakeCode. Classroom projects not only are engaging but also effectively demonstrate abstract programming concepts. Projects selection is based on a set of software and hardware features in order to choose the ones that best help students learn basic programming concepts.
- J. C. Adams, R. A Brown, J. Kawash, S. J. Mathews, and E. Shoop . 2018. Leveraging the Raspberry Pi for CS Education. New York, NY, USA. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Shuchi Grover and Satabdi Basu . 2017. Measuring Student Learning in Introductory Block-Based Programming: Examining Misconceptions of Loops, Variables, and Boolean Logic. New York, NY, USA. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
Using Physical Computing Projects in Teaching Introductory Programming
Recommendations
Teaching with physical computing devices: the BBC micro:bit initiative
WiPSCE '17: Proceedings of the 12th Workshop on Primary and Secondary Computing EducationThere is a growing interest in small programmable devices that can be used in schools and in extra-curricular contexts to teach computer science. The BBC micro:bit is one such device; through a collaborative venture, micro:bits were recently distributed ...
How to Plan and Run Summer Computing Camps: Logistics (Abstract Only)
SIGCSE '16: Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science EducationThis workshop will provide details on how to plan and run non-residential, week-long computing summer camps for 4th-12th grade students. Georgia Tech has been offering computing summer camps since 2004. These camps are financially self-sustaining and ...
Scaling Introductory Courses Using Undergraduate Teaching Assistants
SIGCSE '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science EducationUndergraduates are widely used in support of Computer Science (CS) departments' teaching missions as teaching assistants, peer mentors, section leaders, course assistants, and tutors. Those undergraduates engaged in teaching have the opportunity to ...
Comments