Susumu Kanemune

Dolittle - experiences in teaching programming at K12 schools

The Japanese government has been promoting IT education, including programming, at elementary and secondary (K12) schools since 2002. We have developed Dolittle, an object-oriented programming language suitable for K12 education, and evaluated it through the teaching opportunities available in classrooms. This work describes the outline and the future outlook of Dolittle, and reports on the examples of how it is used in classes.

Learning computer programming with autonomous robots

This paper reports on a programming lesson using autonomous robots in junior high school. First, the design of the low cost circuit board for the lesson is described. The structure of a general programming language “Dolittle” which controls a robot is also explained. Then, we introduce lessons of manufacturing and controlling robots in “Information and Computer” area of “Technology and Home Economics” subject for students (from 14 to 15 years old). From the result of the lessons we found that (1) learning programming is “hard fun” for students and (2) robot programming is effective for students those who have difficulties in learning. We propose introduction of learning programming with autonomous robots to IT education of junior high school.

Proposal for Teaching Manufacturing and Control Programming Using Autonomous Mobile Robots with an Arm

We propose a technology education curriculum for lower secondary school students using an autonomous mobile robot with an arm. The purpose of our curriculum is to teach the concept of systems that work with mechanics, electricity and computers. For this purpose, we have developed a control board and a computer language for an autonomous mobile robot with an arm. The benefit of this kind of robot is that students have to seriously think about the program for controlling the arm to lift and carry objects. This kind of serious thought is not necessary in programming simple mobile robots without arms[1]. In this paper, we will report a test conducted to evaluate our teaching materials and lessons in lower secondary school. As a result, our technology education curriculum satisfies requirements for students that have more incentives to learn the concept of systems.

Multilingual Programming Language Environments for Intercultural Collaboration of Programming Education in K-12

This article is chiefly concerned with multilingual programming language and system for collaboration of programming education in K-12. For a programming language to become a multilingual, it could be programmed in a manner independent on any locale. And this locale independent resource files can be easily translated into a new locale. Therefore when a multilingual programming language for K-12 is designed, it should have no keywords that have a particular meaning to the programming language. In addition, it specifies a set of characters which are based on Unicode character instead of a single character. Dolittle as a both multilingual and educational programming language has all kinds of features described above. Especially, it supports translation server for interculture collaboration between Korea and Japan to teach and learn programming education in K-12. We also conducted experimental lesson to evaluate the effectiveness of Dolittles inflected dictionary in Korea. It was found from the result of the experimental lesson that using inflected dictionary of identifiers can decrease overall error ratio in comparison with using only one identifier.