Authors:
Eva Schmidthaler
1
;
Sylvia van Borkulo
2
;
Martin Cápay
3
;
Bjarnheiður Kristinsdóttir
4
;
Rebecca Stäter
5
;
Tim Läufer
5
;
Matthias Ludwig
5
;
David Hornsby
1
;
Jakob Skogø
1
and
Zsolt Lavicza
1
Affiliations:
1
School of Education/STEM Didactics, Johannes Kepler, University, Altenbergerstraße 69, Linz, Austria
;
2
Freudenthal Institute, Utrecht University, Princetonplein 5, Utrecht, The Netherlands
;
3
Department of Informatics, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Tr. A. Hlinku 1, Nitra, Slovakia
;
4
School of Education, University of Iceland, Stakkahlíð 105, Reykjavík, Iceland
;
5
Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science Education, Goethe University Frankfurt, Robert-Mayer-Str. 6-8, Frankfurt (Main), Germany
Keyword(s):
Computational Thinking, Augmented Reality, Block-Based Programming, Mobile Educational Application, mAR, STEM Education.
Abstract:
In recent years, numerous applications (apps) for mobile devices have been developed for STEM education, but there is a lack of suitable educational apps that support teachers in promoting computational thinking (CT) in mathematics and computer science (CS) lessons. In this position paper, two types of CT tasks, Building Cubes and Draw-o-Bot, of the newly developed app with augmented reality (AR) function, are described, and preliminary results from four workshops that were held in total with 76 10-18-year-old secondary and grammar school students in Austria (W1), the Netherlands (W2), and Slovakia (W3) are discussed. The tasks and the mobile app itself were created as part of the -project, an Erasmus+ project, in which seven institutions from five European countries are involved. Each type of task includes a set of CT tasks related to the block-based programming (BBP) app. In the workshops, we set out to explore how the participating secondary school students so
lved the CT tasks, whilst using . The experiences made in the workshops will be used to inform the further development of the application, and to prepare teacher training to support the successful implementation of as an educational tool in schools. The first findings indicate that the participating students react positively to the app, can solve BBP tasks successfully, and create loops to shorten their code. In the future, further task types will be implemented in the app and researched.
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