Abstract:

One of the major advantage of STEM education is the opportunity to visualize the complex theoretical information from the curriculum .This article presents the STEM methods in studying cyclic construction on programming language Python by using Raspberry Pi and educational program Edublocks for visualizing programming code.

Introduction:
To make the process of education more efficient and provoke the students’ interest just applying technology is not enough. What we need is to know the different styles of learning. Teachers should take into account students’ preferences and interests and use different teaching strategies. There are numerous studying styles defined in the literature which are based on the personal preferences and ways of perception and transformation of the new information and because of that there should be different approaches and methods of teaching. Using ICT in educational process is a contemporary approach of presenting various elements of the educational environment by creating a suitable setting for almost all learning styles. Dissatisfaction from the educational process is overcome by improving students’ motivation of learning.

Characteristics of STEM model of education:
The STEM model comprise of two or more of the given above methods of education.
STEM model (Science – Technology – Engineering - Mathematics) is teaching through the methods of science, technologies, engineering and mathematics. Children take part in experiments, share their ideas and contribute to the development of various group projects. STEM is a new way of studying about the world, it is the most effective and widely used method of teaching in Western Europe and the USA.
One of the major advantage of STEM educational model is the integration of the separate curricular subjects in order to create a bigger project, which allows student to see the relation between the different curricular subjects. This helps them see the real use of the knowledge and it’s practical application.

Raspberry Pi 4 (RPI) is a single board computer with the size of a credit card. It is designed in the UK by Raspberry Pi Foundation with the sole purpose to make basic computer studies more popular in schools. Using RPI and STEM based education give powerful instruments in teaching such complicated programming language as Python and Java.

Methodology in studying cyclic programming constructions using Python:
The methodology aims to support and eases students when they study the studying cyclic construction during extracurricular activities. Educational materials are designed to fulfill the purpose of the lesson and for this reason STEM method is considered to be the most useful instrument.

Task 1
Aim of the lesson:
- Acquiring skills to work with cyclic structure While.
-• Developing skills to use algorithms of solving practical tasks that use cyclic structures.

Practical implementing of the task:
- Each student has minicomputer Raspberry Pi 4 with Edublocks installed on it.
- The student has to make an algorithm that uses cyclic structure While, which uses the function random and generates random number in the scale between 0-200 with minimal pace of 10. The algorithm has to generate random number.
- The student has to use the system of visual programming Edublocks to create the algorithm while simultaneously associates the programming code from the editor to the blocks of the algorithm.

Keywords:

STEM, education, informatics, Raspberry Pi.