Anna Beata Kwiatkowska

The Challenging Face of Informatics Education in Poland

In this paper, a learning and teaching framework is described which is aimed at increasing student interest in studying computer science as a discipline, or at least in better understanding how a computer and its tools work and can be used in solving problems which may occur in different areas. In the beginning of information education in Poland, in the mid 80s, the informatics curricula for schools and teaching were focused on computer science. Then, in the beginning of the 90s, with the growing popularity and wide use of end-user friendly software, the emphasis in education has moved from computer science to information technology, from constructing computer solutions to using ready-made tools, from computer science for some students to information technology for all. We demonstrate here, however, how teaching and learning information technology can be used to enhance algorithmic and computational thinking in solving with computers, problems which arise in various school subjects, learning disciplines and in real life. We strongly believe that the learning methodology presented here, about computer use by students and applying computers and information technology to solving problems, would be a good motivation and preparation for their future decisions to study computing and become computer specialists.

Introducing a New Computer Science Curriculum for All School Levels in Poland

The first regular informatics lessons in schools in Poland were organised in the second half of the 1960’. Some of them were devoted to programming a mainframe computer (in Wroclaw) and some to theoretical models of computers and computations (in Warsaw). Then, for more than last 30 years of formal informatics education in Poland we have been very successful in keeping informatics (as computer science) as a stand-alone subject and in shaping its curriculum according to high standards of the discipline. In this paper, in Section 1 we first discuss terminology related to computers in education and then report on early history of informatics education in Poland. In Section 2, the present curriculum of informatics subjects is described in details together with some comments on using computational thinking in its implementation. Then, as the main contribution of this paper we introduce in Section 3 a new computer science curriculum for all school levels in Poland. To this end, the existing curricula of informatics subjects have been remodeled, extended (e.g. by adding programming to each level), and unified according to the five Unified aims of learning computing. The new curriculum benefits very much from our prior curricula and experience. Finally we discuss some implementation details, supporting activities, and the road map for a successful introduction of the curriculum to all schools.

Contribution of informatics education to mathematics education in schools

In this paper we discuss a number of topics which are usually considered as a part of informatics education and we show how they can enhance substantially mathematics education. The presented problems may be used as a bridge between both school subjects which can integrate them and help to better understand mathematics and informatics and the relations between both disciplines. The informatics topics discussed here belong to discrete mathematics which plays an important role in the development of efficient computer algorithms. Some of these mathematical topics are already included in some informatics curricula, however they are still absent in mathematics education. One may expect some changes when, according to the model for ICT development, school informatics and school mathematics will reach the fourth stage (ICT specialization).

Playing with computing at a children's university

A childrens university in Poland is a popular, organized form of inviting young children to activities which are offered and run by academic teachers. We have been involved in such initiatives whose goal is to introduce children to some concepts in computer science. According to Piaget (see [1]), children before the age of seven, can think abstractly only about physical, concrete or observable objects and phenomena. Therefore in our approach we work with children in a number of environments which consist of two stages: first they are engaged in cooperative games and puzzles that use concrete objects (like in unplugged CS), and then they move to computational thinking about the objects and about the concepts they are learning. In this way we introduce our young students to such CS concepts as: calculations using mechanical tools, complexity issues (the Tower of Hanoi, Fibonacci numbers, and binary search), and graph models (of real world situations).

Introducing Students to Recursion: A Multi-facet and Multi-tool Approach

In this paper we discuss a number of results and advices coming from our observations and didactical experience gathered when teaching about recursion in different contexts and on various education level (K-12 and tertiary). Knowing the difficulty in introducing, explaining and using recursion, we differentiate our approach, tools, and methods. Recursion can be introduced as a ‘real-life topic’ – see Section 2, and then software for visualization of recursive computations (Section 3) can be very helpful to overcome some difficulties by novices. Section 4 is on developing recursive thinking – we use two popular topics – generating Fibonacci number and printing digits of a number – to explain how to introduce students to different aspects of recursion. Section 5 is addressed to complexity of recursive computations – we discuss how to use recursion in a most effective way.

On Page Number of N -free Posets

Abstract In this paper we deal with the page number of partially ordered sets (posets). In particular, we find the page number of some N -free posets whose root graphs form a family of planar posets with known page number.

On Posets of Page Number 2

Abstract In this paper we deal with the page number of partially ordered sets (posets). We provide a lower bound in the terms of the jump number and then study posets with page number 2.