Teaching Computer Programming to Post-millennial Kids:

Overview of Goals, Activities and Supporting Tools

Christophe Ponsard

CETIC Research Centre, Gosselies, Belgium

Keywords: Education, Coding, Computer Science, Computational Thinking, Robotics, Flipped Classrooms STEM.

Abstract:

Post-millennial kids have experienced Internet technologies from their early age both at home and at school.

Although this familiarity can trigger interest in learning how to engineer software, the learning itself needs

teaching instruments that are adapted to their generation. In this paper, we focus on early steps where the

teenager is mainly in a discovery phase. Starting from key education goals and skills to develop as children

of the 21st century, we look how they relate with computer programming and computational thinking. We

also look how synergies can be established with other matters like Sciences, Technology, Engineering, Arts

and Mathematics (STEAM). We analyse how such goals can be met using different kinds of activities and

supporting tools. Our work is illustrated by practical experiences carried out in Belgium. Based on this, we

also propose a general roadmap for setting up education programs targeting those kids.

1 INTRODUCTION

In the last twenty years, Internet and computer tech-

nologies have grown and matured to the point of

becoming ubiquitous in our daily lives and also in

the lives of our children. Post-millennial kids (i.e.

born after 2000, also known as ”Generation Z”) are

now growing and are about to reach their majority.

They are totally familiar with using computers, smart-

phones, tablets and can quickly ﬁnd and process in-

formation from the web and social networks. This

generation is different from the previous generation in

terms of multi-tasking, entrepreneurship and expecta-

tions. However this also comes at a price of less skills

for hand written work and more chances to be affected

by attention deﬁcit disorder (Promethean, 2017).

Both primary and secondary school levels (also

referred to as ”K12”) have adopted digital technol-

ogy to support education by providing Internet access,

using speciﬁc learning software or hardware like in-

teractive boards. In contrast with ”learning through

digital means”, ”learning what digital means” is far

less developed and this fact is largely recognised: in

the US only 40% of U.S. schools offer C.S. classes

with computer programming (Gallup, 2016). In Eu-

rope, the situation varies a lot depending on country

speciﬁc policies. A survey carried out in 2014-2015

across 21 European countries showed that coding was

part of the curriculum in 16 of them (about 75%) un-

der some form which can be optional or integrated

within other courses. It is integrated at upper sec-

ondary school in about half of the countries and com-

pulsory in one third of the countries at speciﬁc (voca-

tional) level (Balanskat and Engelhardt, 2015).

Figure 1: A few initiatives for computer science education

In reaction to this situation, a number of com-

plementary initiatives in computer science education

have emerged, e.g. CoderDojo (Liao et al., 2011),

Devoxx4Kids (Devoxx4Kids, 2010), First LEGO

League (FLL) (Kamen, 1999) as depicted in Fig-

ure 1. Some are relying on a form of competition ei-

ther in teams like FLL or individually like Informat-

All trademarks, product names and logos appearing on

the ﬁgure are the property of their respective owners and are

shown for education information purposes only.

474

Ponsard, C.

Teaching Computer Programming to Post-millennial Kids: Overview of Goals, Activities and Supporting Tools.

DOI: 10.5220/0007755104740480

In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2019), pages 474-480

ISBN: 978-989-758-367-4

ics Olympiad (IOI, 1989). In addition, many online

resources and tutorials for learning are also available

like Scratch (MIT, 2002), CodeCombat (Saines et al.,

2013) or Hour of Code (and beyond) (Partovi and Par-

tovi, 2013). They rely on simple to learn languages

based on visual block-based paradigms or high level

scripting languages like Python. Speciﬁc target do-

mains may be used as concrete support for devel-

oping coding skills like robotics (used by FLL, De-

voxx4kids) or mobile application programming, e.g.

MIT App Inventor (MIT, 2012).

The ICT industry is also sponsoring those initia-

tives in order to encourage students to engage in a

computer science curriculum given the current short-

age of skilled workers in this domain (D-Soul, 2013),

even though it might be in the ﬁrst place for their own

interest (Tarnoff, 2017). Of course every kid will not

turn into a computer scientist. The goal of education

should be centred on providing kids with a consis-

tent education relying on the use of computers both

as an education support but also as a tool that can be

programmed for meaningful purposes, e.g. in rela-

tion with some speciﬁc courses or a transverse project

mixing Scientiﬁc, Technology, Engineering, Mathe-

matics (STEM) and which can also include artistic

dimensions (STEAM, with the extra ”A”).

The purpose of this paper is to look a bit more

into details in those kinds of goals and analyse how

the available activities and tools sketched hereabove

ﬁt with them. Our work does not claim to be exhaus-

tive but to give what we believe is a representative

overview together with a useful roadmap. It is also

anchored in the author personal experience (both as

parent and volunteer) in Belgium where the evolution

of secondary school teaching is being discussed thor-

oughly, including about learning computational think-

ing and computer programming.

This paper is structured as follows. First Section

2 recaps the main goals and skills developed at sec-

ondary school in our 21st century. Section 3 explores

how Software Engineering can be taught in this con-

text. Section 4 discusses some related work. Finally,

Section 5 concludes and discusses some next steps.

2 EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT

2.1 General Goals and Skills

Deﬁning education goals and skills is not an easy task

but this work has been tackled by different groups

considering the needs of our present world. For exam-

ple, the P21’s Framework (Trilling and Fadel, 2009)

organises the basic skills as follows:

• core subjects including native/foreign language

skills, arts, geography, history, mathematics, sci-

ence, civics.

• more speciﬁc 21st century themes like global

awareness, economics, health literacy, en-

trepreneurial literacy

In addition, many transverse skills have been iden-

tiﬁed. They cover innovation, ICT and ”soft” skills.

Those are summarised into ”7C” skills that come on

top of the above core skills:

• Critical thinking and problem solving

• Creativity and innovation

• Collaboration, teamwork, and leadership

• Cross-cultural understanding

• Communications, information, and media literacy

• Computing and ICT literacy

• Career and learning self-reliance

2.2 Rationale for Teaching Kids to Code

The importance of learning to code is often empha-

sised nowadays because of the fourth industrial rev-

olution and its high impact on the computerisation

and automation of our personal and professional lives.

Computer programming has become a highly de-

manded skill and it can gives students a competitive

advantage when applying to colleges or for a job.

Figure 2: Typical goals of a computer curriculum.

Of course the perspective of professional opportu-

nities should not be reduced to job marketing. From

an educational point of view, several reasons have

been identiﬁed, e.g. (Bradford, 2016). Actually “pro-

gramming” is a complex activity involving the follow-

ing dimensions that can have educational beneﬁts:

• Computational thinking is a set problem-solving

methods that involve expressing problems and

Teaching Computer Programming to Post-millennial Kids: Overview of Goals, Activities and Supporting Tools

475

their solutions in ways that a computer could ex-

ecute (Wing, 2006). It covers concepts like de-

composition, pattern recognition, abstraction and

algorithms. This helps in developing mathemati-

cal, analytical as well as organisational skills.

• Coding is the practical implementation of an al-

gorithm into a programming language which can

be a visual programming language like Scratch.

The early exposure to a computer language with

its own syntax and semantics is as rewarding as

learning a foreign language. In addition, com-

puter programming requires a high level of rigour

in order to be correctly executed.

• Many soft skills are also involved as coding is cre-

ative process requiring a lot of communication to

understand the problem and collaboration to ﬁnd a

solution. The process is also iterative and includes

the need of identifying and correcting errors with-

out falling into “trial an error” mode.

Those high level objectives can be further reﬁned

into ﬁner grained goals of a computer curriculum as

depicted in Figure 2 from (Baker, 2012). They can be

achieved in computer science classes directly or in the

context of other matters, e.g. through STEAM activi-

ties. Note also that many activities such as computa-

tional thinking, collaboration, communication relates

to the ”7C’s” presented in Section 2.1.

2.3 Teaching in the Digital Age

Traditional (or “victorian”) teaching has relied on the

“I Do” (teacher), “We Do” (in-class exercises), “You

Do” (homework) model for years. It does not foster

active participation and collaboration. The teacher is

also seen as the reference source of information which

is no longer true with several sources of information

(of various quality) available through Internet.

Figure 3: Traditional classroom vs ﬂipped classroom.

In the last 20 years, different models have

emerged to address those issues and to use teaching

possibilities enabled by our digital age:

• Inverted classrooms, depicted in Figure 3, com-

pletely reverts the paradigm by using a “You Do”,

“We Do”, “I Do” approach, i.e. students need to

discover instructional content outside of the class-

room, possibly through digital means like videos.

Then they collaborate through online discussions

and within classroom under the personalised guid-

ance of the teacher. This requires more engage-

ment but results in higher motivation and positive

reinforcement (Baker, 2000).

• Problem based learning is one possible trigger for

an inverted classroom. It anchors the learning pro-

cess in an open problem. Teamwork is used to

identify and acquire the required skills to solve the

problem. It fosters autonomy and provide strong

learning rationales (Amador et al., 2006).

• Online Courses either Massive Online (MOOC)

or Small Private (SPOC) can support a blended

form of education by providing high quality on-

line content together with collaboration means

(Kaplan and Haenlein, 2016).

3 A JOURNEY THROUGH CODE

RELATED ACTIVITIES

This section reviews different types of activities sup-

porting the development of programming skills in the

large from early phase of discovery to more speciﬁc

activities relating to computational thinking, cod-

ing and project-oriented challenges. Those activities

can be roughly structured according to the roadmap

sketched in Figure 4. We will illustrate some of them

with local experiments.

Figure 4: Roadmap for Teaching Coding.

CSEDU 2019 - 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

476

3.1 Discovery Activities

The main goal is to demystify what it means to pro-

gram in connection with some purpose, e.g. control-

ling a small robot, producing a simple animation or

game. The format is short, with no prerequisite, so it

relies on very intuitive tools and the presence of tutor

to help in this discovery.

Hour of code and more generally Coder Dojo

sessions propose various challenges of progressive

difﬁculty and at some point the learner can come with

its own project. This can be a small video game but it

can also be related to some science project, e.g. Fig-

ure 6. Volunteers are present to help in progressing

(typically 1 for 6 kids).

Figure 5: Nao programming session at Devoxx4Kids.

Devoxx4Kids are short activities quite directed

but exploring different technologies like Minecraft

(java code), Nao/EVC3 (both robotics, block-based)

or Scratch (possibly interactive using the webcam). A

volunteer is overseeing each activity. Figure 5 shows

a programming session with Nao.

3.2 Learning to Code

Visual programming using block-based languages is

widely used to teach coding to children because

blocks are easy to recognise through their shape,

colour and position in a palette. Those shapes are also

designed to only allow valid assembly which rules out

a large class of syntactic errors that are a main prob-

lem for beginners with a textual programming lan-

guage. Such languages come in different ﬂavours but

most of them are now web-based, and Open Source.

Many also rely on the Blockly javascript framework

(Google, 2012). The most common are:

• Scratch (MIT, 2002) emphasises on sharing,

reusing and combining code through its large

community. A large repository of code is avail-

able. An example of aquaponics simulation (dis-

cussed in section 3.3) is depicted in Figure 6.

• MIT App Inventor (MIT, 2012) is directed to the

generation of mobile application. In addition to

blocks, it also includes a quite powerful yet simple

screen designer. It also supports project sharing.

• Microsoft MakeCode (Microsoft, 2018) is a

framework for creating domain-speciﬁc program-

ming experiences for beginners. It brings com-

puter science to life for all students with fun

projects, immediate results, and both block and

text editors for learners at different levels.

Figure 6: An aquaponic serious game with Scratch.

Many robotics toolkits such as LEGO Mindstorms

or Nao also come with a block-based language for

programming a robot through speciﬁc blocks mapped

to the available sensors and actuators. Although of-

ten closed, Open Source alternative exists, e.g. Mind-

storms blocks are available in Scratch, App Inventor

and MakeCode. Figure 7 shows a typical FLL mis-

sion and the corresponding Mindstorms code at the

top. Note that in parallel to code the robot also needs

to be designed as part of a wider project activity (see

next section).

Figure 7: Shark mission: robot and corresponding EV3

code.

Teaching Computer Programming to Post-millennial Kids: Overview of Goals, Activities and Supporting Tools

477

Learning textual programming language is pro-

posed by frameworks like CodeCombat (Saines et al.,

2013) or CodeMonley (Schor et al., 2016) typically

for languages like Python and Javascript variants.

Both those visual and textual languages provide

progressive, usually game-based, challenges to teach

basic concept such as objects, function calls, argu-

ments, variables, arrays, loops, conditions and various

operators. They also typically rely on event-driven

programming for managing user interactions, driving

animations or controlling hardware (e.g. robot).

3.3 Project-driven Activities

Projects aim at making pupils work together on a

problem and on the design of its solution. In the pro-

cess, they will learn both technical and non-technical

skills. Such projects can be proposed in the scope of

a speciﬁc course (e.g. programming the robot in com-

puter course) but they are often best carried out in a

multi-disciplinary STE(A)M context even if this re-

quires more coordination between teachers.

Project-driven activities are proposed by FLL

challenges under two forms, both interesting from the

programming perspective:

• the main FLL activity is to program a LEGO robot

to achieve a maximum of tasks (or missions) on a

thematic mat (e.g. help animal, manage rubbish,

living in space...) within 2:30 minutes. This re-

quires to program the EV3 LEGO brick controller

but prior to that, it is mandatory to design the

robot that will solve a mission so this requires far

more that programming skills.

• a STEAM project related to the annual theme

must also be developed. A possible project, re-

lated to the water theme, is to build an aquaponic

system combining ﬁshes, plants and bacteria. It

is primary related to biology and the nitrogen cy-

cle but analysing how such a system evolves re-

quires some modelling which can then be studied

using an existing simulator or by coding a simpli-

ﬁed version. A nice simulator interface will also

mobilise artistic skills as depicted in Figure 8.

Actually proposing pupils to try to solve a prob-

lem will lead them across a very rich journey start-

ing by deﬁning the problem, then analysing it, in-

vestigating possible solutions and ﬁnally producing

some code as part of the solution (see Section 3.3).

This process will trigger creativity and innovation but

also some research about what might have been done

by others. Different talents can express themselves

within such a team. Some might focus on under-

standing the problem, coding, designing user inter-

face, testing and enhancing, advertising,... But in the

Figure 8: Serious game showing an aquaponics simulator.

end, everybody should bring its contribution to the so-

lution. So having the opportunity to organise a project

will exercise far more skills than just learning a pro-

gramming language to code a well deﬁned problem.

3.4 Computational Thinking Activities

Purely algorithmic challenges can be part of learn-

ing challenges proposed as part of code learning ac-

tivities but some more speciﬁc web-sites also pro-

pose dedicated activities such as the AlgoBot seri-

ous game (Fishing Cactus, 2018) or CSunplugged

(U.Canterbury, 2018) which has to speciﬁcity to per-

form activities without the use of a computer. Algo-

rithmic challenges are also proposed by the Informat-

ics Olympiad which are individual, although a spe-

ciﬁc coaching is organised in preparation and on-line

material is also available (IOI, 1989).

Project driven challenges require to analyse the

problem in order to elaborate a solution which can

take the form of a code or with some coding is in-

volved in the design of a solution. Looking back at the

robot design activity stated previously, it has to meet a

number of constraints such as the need to accomplish

many tasks in a short time, hence to combine differ-

ent tasks along a path in a given area. Moreover, the

availability of limited sensors and motors requires to

design and code the tooling in a modular and efﬁcient

way, e.g. using an arm to grab different things or use

some clever passive mechanism triggered by contact.

A number of useful patterns can be learned and then

reused when designing new robot mission.

Most of the time, software is not the central part

of a project but using a computer is useful to under-

stand how the designed solution will behave given its

complexity. Typically, simulations can be carried out

based on a model. Modelling is an abstraction activ-

ity in computational thinking. It can rely on differ-

ent formalisms depending of the kind of system be-

CSEDU 2019 - 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

478

ing designed. Going back at the aquaponic example,

the biological system is driven by the biochemistry of

the nitrogen cycle and can be modelled using system

dynamics. A more naive simulation can be developed

using a few simple evolution rules using discrete time.

Figure 9: Modelling, simulating and 3D printing an

origami.

Figure 9 shows another project relating to the de-

sign of foldable solids that could be used in a spatial

context. A ﬁrst abstraction with no thickness can rely

on the use of origami paper models. Those can actu-

ally be simulated using computer models very simple

to design as SVG ﬁles modelling the crease patterns.

Then using a simple online simulator can help to un-

derstand the folding behaviour and reveal the pres-

ence of distortions (Ghassaei, 2017). Some good can-

didates can then be checked further by building them

with ticker material or by using 3D printing.

4 DISCUSSION AND RELATED

WORK

Our work does not claim to be exhaustive but rather

representative of the kind of activities that can be

explored to teach various aspect of computer sci-

ence (including coding) to children and which makes

sense with other educational goals. The (Taccle3,

2015) project has carried out a more extensive survey

reviewing multiple applications and robotic toolkits

(Garc

ıa-Pe

nalvo et al., 2016).

Computational thinking has also been criticised

because of its vagueness and the way it sees the world

as a series of problems that have computational solu-

tions (Easterbrook, 2014). The author argues that this

view is too narrow and that we need a wider system

thinking approach able to deal with a broader context

also including the human behaviour and environmen-

tal impact, e.g. for sustainability challenges. We are

convinced that a problem based approach can actually

provide such a perspective and that a computer can be

used to understand the dynamics of a system. How-

ever, such activities are already quite advanced and

reserved for college level, and it is less an issue for

younger kids who will enjoy discovering a range of

thinking styles and problem solving approaches.

The beneﬁts of multi-disciplinary challenges like

the FLL have also been reported. Students involved

in such challenges usually improved their learning

about real-world applications, problem solving, en-

gagement, communication, and the technology/engi-

neering cycle (Chris, 2013). A more general em-

pirical study on the effect of educational robotics

on pupil’s capabilities indicates signiﬁcant impact on

mathematics/scientiﬁc investigation, teamwork and

social skills as well as for technical and soft skills

(Kandlhofer and Steinbauer, 2015).

Finally, using gamiﬁcation for teaching STEM has

been reported to encourage a reciprocated engage-

ment between instructors and students during the en-

tire length of the course (Machajewski, 2017). A spe-

ciﬁc study reviewed and compared how seven coun-

tries in Europe and the US are gamifying program-

ming education (Lindberg et al., 2018). It points out

that programming games are not a silver bullet capa-

ble of replacing Scratch-like tools. It also stresses

some learning strategies such as problem-based and

the current lack of social learning among players.

5 CONCLUSIONS AND

PERSPECTIVES

This short paper has surveyed different educational

goals with a focus on learning to program. We

have looked into the evolution of teaching paradigms.

Based on this, we have sketched a roadmap of activi-

ties from demystiﬁcation to acquiring various coding

skills together with more general STEAM skills. We

have also illustrated different types of activities that

can help growing post-millennial kids to learn coding

but also a larger set of useful innovation, communica-

tion and collaboration skills. This can be organised at

school but requires coordination and involvement of

teachers across different disciplines. For now, in Bel-

gium, the approach is only being adapted by a limited

number of schools based on motivated teachers but it

is certainly a direction to promote for the future evo-

lution of teaching programs.

At this point, our experience is still limited and

the feedback is mostly qualitative regarding the ef-

fectiveness of the proposed activities. However, we

Teaching Computer Programming to Post-millennial Kids: Overview of Goals, Activities and Supporting Tools

479

believe this input is worth being shared and will en-

courage others to publish their own experience. This

kind of material could eventually be more systemati-

cally gathered, consolidated and published in order to

provide better guidelines, especially when it comes to

the training of teachers at school or volunteers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Thanks to all the volunteers organising the reported

activities: Devoxx4kids, Conﬂuent des Savoir (UNa-

mur), Technobel LEGO Studio, Coder Dojo Wallonia

and CS department of UCLouvain.

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