Gail Hopkins

Learning Computational Thinking Through the Use of Flash Action Scripts

The teaching of Computer programming is now mandated in UK state run primary and secondary schools but few elementary teachers have any exposure to programming and are generally from backgrounds that have not given them fluency in using such technology. This paper outlines an attempt to develop a training scheme for trainee teachers that will introduce them to computational thinking through the use of the Flash Action Script Development environment. It is believed that learning how to use this tool will provide them with greater motivation to learn how to program as the scripts will be used to develop teaching instruments that they might use in their classroom. The current paper reports progress on the development of a tool that will allow the teaching of Flash Action Scripts and the testing of this approach on groups of trainee and experienced teachers. It reports on an experiment and the relative level of enthusiasm, motivation and attitude of the experienced teachers and the trainee teachers both before and after exposure to the pilot tool. As expected the trainee teachers had a more positive attitude towards the potential of the learning tool but both groups had improved attitude and enthusiasm after the experiment.

Computational Thinking: A Tool to Motivate Understanding in Elementary School Teachers

The need for teachers of Elementary School children to learn to program or rather to understand the Computational Thinking behind programming has been accelerated in many countries by the mandated teaching of programming in this context. A major problem is that the majority of such teachers have no concept of how to program and naturally are not motivated to learn programming. The need to teach programming will motivate most but to learn through a tool that can be seen to have intrinsic value in their role as teachers have a greater potential. This paper describes the design and early implementation of a tool to use the learning of Flash Action Scripting as a motivational mechanism for trainee teachers. The intrinsic value to them is intended to be the utilisation of the learned Action Scripting skills to produce their own teaching material. Initial results indicate an enhanced engagement and motivation to learn to program and improved confidence in doing so.

AnswerPro: Designing to Motivate Interaction

This paper describes the design and initial testing of AnswerPro, a mobile academic peer support system for UK Key Stage 3 and 4 pupils (11-16 year olds). AnswerPro is a web application that enables pupils to seek support from their knowledgeable peers on various subjects. This paper correlates the findings from a previous requirements-gathering exercise, and from research into academic motivation, to propose design elements embedded within AnswerPro. A pilot study was conducted with 7 school pupils over 3 weeks. Participants then engaged in a focus group which discussed their experience using AnswerPro and the motivational elements embedded within it. Findings from their use of AnswerPro, and from the subsequent discussion, highlighted some problems with the embedded motivational features. As a result, suggestions for potential solutions and their merits are proposed for the next version of AnswerPro.